


Tony Stark and the Illegal Cross-Country Road Trip from Hell

by ActionAddiction



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: But Where Was Clint Barton? - Verse, Drama, Fluff and Crack, Humor, Humour, M/M, Multi, Road Trips, Romance, Slash, Stucky - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-19
Updated: 2014-08-31
Packaged: 2018-01-19 23:21:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1487854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ActionAddiction/pseuds/ActionAddiction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A stir-crazy genius, a secretly sentimental assassin, two soldiers lost in time, and an undercover archer without an identity zigzag across the continental United States in Fury's stolen van. </p><p>Or: How Bucky Met Steve (Again)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Which Fury Might Have Some Transportation Issues Starting Tomorrow

**Author's Note:**

> This was written to answer the question that I asked my best friend after the credits of Captain America: The Winter Soldier. 
> 
> "But where was Clint Barton?"
> 
> This story takes place approximately a month after the events in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. The scene opens as Tony Stark rests in his New York penthouse late on a Thursday night.

“…and for only three monthly payments of $19.99…”

The television droned in the background as Tony reclined back, overly expensive scotch in hand. The nighttime lights of New York twinkled impersonally as he looked on. If Tony was being honest with himself, he’d always rather disliked the city, and the recent catastrophe involving Loki’s army of giant blue dogs riding hovercrafts had done nothing to improve his opinions.

Just as the contents of his glass were beginning to lull him to sleep, an aggressive buzzing on the wooden surface next to his ear caused him to jerk up so quickly he got a crick in his neck.

“Jesus,” He rubbed at the complaining muscles, trying to slow the pace of his galloping heart. It was just the phone for Christ’s sake. “JARVIS, caller I.D.?”

“ _Captain Rogers on the phone for you, sir._ ”

“Is he calling from a SHIELD landline, or has Steve finally gotten his hands on technology from after the founding of the colonies?” Tony addressed the room at large, not bothering to pay attention to his AI’s reply. _Count backwards from ten_. That’s what Rhodey always said unhelpfully when he was freaking out, albeit unnecessarily. _Screw Rhodey_. He thought savagely. Now where the hell did he put down his glass?

“ _Neither, sir. My tracking systems indicate that he is calling from an unsecured payphone line located three blocks from his residence._ ”

An unsecured payphone line? Tony glanced at the digital clock in the left hand corner of the screen; it was nearly quarter to one in the morning. Oh, this was going to be good.

“Alright, JARVIS, let him through.”

His answer was met with several seconds of slightly uncomfortable silence, punctuated only by - who Tony could only presume to be – Steve’s shallow breathing. It sounded like he had been out running. Tony checked the thermostat: 29 degrees, perfect light jogging weather.

Just as he opened his mouth to let out some smart-ass comment about the merits of unsavory phone breathing, Steve sighed. “Tony?”

“…Cap?” Tony answered, reluctantly and more than a little confused. “I know you like to get an early start and all that but I think you’re supposed to wait until _after_ everyone’s gone home for the night until you-”

“ _Tony_ ,” Steve cut off his rambling with an aggravated sound. “Are you…busy?”

Although he wasn’t quite sure what Steve was getting at, Tony was fairly certain that he could’ve cut through the awkwardly self-conscious pauses with a butter knife and spread them on a cracker. “I mean, typically I ask that you buy me a drink before I take you home, but hey, what the hell, you might as well come over. It’s not like I had anything better going on tonight anyway.”

 _Probably more SHIELD secrecy getting his star spangled panties in a twist._ Hell if he could do anything about it, though.

It was odd, Steve choosing to come to him. The two of them had rarely spoken, if ever since the termination of the Avengers Initiative. Who knows, maybe he would even get the chance to play with some of the new toys he’d been working on. If anything, Fury should be thanking Tony for keeping him on his toes.

 _Still, might make for an entertaining evening._ Tony thought, settling down to pour himself another finger of scotch, glowering as the lights beyond his window winked at him knowingly.

\---

“You want to _what_?” Steve shrugged, his coat leaving a slowly spreading wet patch on his shirt, because the guy was too damn polite to just throw it on the seat next to him when he failed to find a coat rack among all the shiny modern architecture. “I - Rogers, are you out of your goddamn _mind_?” It was entirely possible, now that Tony thought about it. Steve looked like he really hadn’t been sleeping right the past few weeks, if the dark bruises under bloodshot blue irises were anything to go by.

“No. Yes. I’m, uh, not quite sure about that bit yet.”

“I can’t believe it,” Huffing contentedly, Tony flung Steve’s coat back over his arm. He’d just gotten new chairs for the Penthouse after the last one had been rather unceremoniously thrown at his head and dammit, wet fabric was not good for leather. “You’re planning on breaking the law. Gosh, I feel like a proud father or something.”

“We’re not going to break any laws.” Steve snapped, glancing around nervously as if expecting Fury to jump out at any moment yelling _Ah ha!_ , brandishing a camera. Come to think of it, Tony wasn’t entirely sure he’d put it past the ex-director of SHIELD. The only thing that had kept Fury from bugging Stark’s penthouse years ago was the knowledge that when (not if, _when_ ) Tony himself found the plants, he’d most likely have some poor disgruntled SHIELD employee listening to cheesy pizza delivery boy porn for a solid month.

“I mean, not technically, no. But going against Fury’s direct request not to pursue any leads pertaining to the Winter Soldier? Pretty ballsy move there, Cap.”

“His name is Bucky.” Steve muttered, scowling.

“What?”

“Bucky. That was his name. I mean – is. His name _is_ Bucky Barnes.”

Raising one dark eyebrow, the inventor studied the man in front of him over the lip of his drink. Tony was no stranger to pissing off Fury. To be honest, he rather enjoyed going out of his way to inconvenience the man. All that being said, Tony got the feeling that this project wasn’t the kind of thing they wanted to touch on with. Hell, information about the Winter Soldier had led to the investigation that has just about taken down _SHIELD_ for God’s sake. No, HYDRA certainly was not made up of people any sane person would want to tangle with, especially Tony, if he was inclined to keep himself out of a SHIELD interrogation room. 

Then again, he ran around in a flying metal suit fighting aliens as a hobby. 

“You know, I’m not really sure if Natasha will be on board for this one, Steve. I know you said that she gave you that file, but somehow I feel like SHIELD’s written closed-case notice is a little more...binding. Plus, somehow, even though she doesn’t work for him anymore, I can’t really see her wanting to knock out Fury. Which…actually may prove necessary if things don’t go according to plan, and they never do, trust me.” 

An image of Natasha leaping from the rafters to chloroform Fury in one of her patented thigh-headlocks sprang to mind. Tony shook his head. Weird.

“ _Borrowing_ , Tony. We’re going to return it. Besides,” Steve coughed, pointedly avoiding Tony’s gaze. “It was the only vehicle I could think of with enough bullet-proof armor.”

“Yeah,” Tony shrugged. “Feasibly, it’s probably the most secure car you could get your hands on. Course, if I’m hearing you clearly, we’d have help. You asked myself, for obvious reasons, because, let’s face it, you guys are cool and all, but you’d have a tough time pulling this off with...probably most people.”

Leaning in, Tony took a moment to study Steve. “But…you took a risk coming here tonight. Why did you think I’d agree to something like this? I have a company to run, and in my opinion, the further away Fury is from my ass, the better. In fact, how do you know I won’t go and tell him right now?” He wouldn’t, of course, because that would mean falling right into Fury’s waiting palm. And, more importantly, rather dull. Which would be quite the shame, as this was just starting to peak his interests.

Steve didn’t know it, but Tony had kept his eye on the Winter Soldier project ever since the first line had been entered into SHIELD’s databases. HYDRA had seriously advanced cybernetics, the likes of which - apparently- only Bucky’s arm had ever seen. He wanted in, dammit. And he wanted a piece of that arm. His father had built Steve’s shield so it could stand up to _anything_. The only metal with any hope of puncturing it was currently resting, conveniently sealed, in Tony’s own sternum.

And yet, Tony had seen the footage; Bucky had caught that shield like it was nothing more than a cheap plastic beach Frisbee.

Yeah, he would love to run a few experiments in the lab with that arm, no innuendo intended. He wasn’t sold on their fiery Russian acquaintance, however. “And Natasha? Assuming she would agree to something like this?”

Steve finally allowed his shoulders to slump slightly as he studied the man before him. “Agent Romanov was with me for everything that happened with HYDRA.”

Nodding, Tony looked thoughtful. “Yeah, she’d probably want in. Plus Tasha would totally kick your ass if you came back to her with a giant metal handprint in your crushed skull.”

Steve blinked, and Tony took that as an opportunity to plow right ahead. “Or your own shield cutting through your-”

Apparently not. “I don’t know why I thought you’d help me, to be honest.” said Steve suddenly, and he looked pained at the thought, as if not knowing was somehow even worse than having no reason at all. “I…I knew your father, back when the two of us used to be in the military together. Not that Howard would ever be caught dead behind the front lines. No, Howard was more of a…mastermind-behind-the-scene type. But…back then I barely knew him, I’d only heard that he was a good man through a girl that I used to go out with. He came through for me, though. Man, did he ever. Nearly got himself killed flying a plane through some crazy storm so I could rescue Bucky. I just…if there’s any chance that you’re like him…that you could help me, _would_ help me, I knew that I would be needing your help.

With a small smile, Tony set his nearly empty glass down next to the ugly orange flowers that Pepper had forced him to keep. Something about them being from their biggest client. Tony still though they clashed with his décor, but Pepper had given him one of her looks and told him to stop being such a girl. Whatever. Who bought orange flowers anyway?

As much as he absolutely _adored_ the parallels between himself and papa Stark, he recognized that he could not write himself out Steve’s little rescue mission quite yet.

Steve was giving him a look.

“I’ll do it. Just for the record, though? I’m nothing like Howard. Not even a little bit. I mean, how could I be? Old man never spent enough time around me to even figure out what he was like.” Tony cleared his throat. “So…what way do you want to do this? I can’t wait to take your criminal virginity, ever if you are a bit too old to be my blushing bride. What year were you born, anyway? 1890?”

“I’m not sure...I mean, we’d need time to plan and organize,” And aw, would you look at that? Steve was getting cold feet. How perfectly naïve.

“Look,” Tony sighed, “The less time you have time to overanalyze this, the better. I have it on good authority that SHIELD’s nearly finished breaking down their final facility. The place will be practically unlocked tomorrow. You and Natasha could stroll right in there, and I doubt anyone would even bat an eye.”

“Ah,” And, oh look, Steve was avoiding his eyes again. The architecture of the ceiling was nice, sure, but Tony was pretty sure the room wasn’t _that_ fascinating. “Well- alright. I’m trusting your judgement on this one, Tony.”

“Oh, don’t worry, it’ll be fun.” Tony reached for his tablet and began considering the different ways he might begin running a preliminary scan of the capital. According to the file Steve had brought from Fury, the Soldier’s last known sighting was in DC about two weeks ago. By now, he was sure that if that man had any brain left that hadn’t already been fried, he would’ve hit the road, but it wouldn’t hurt to check.

With an amused hum, Tony rolled his eyes when Steve started. “Look, it’ll be fine. Bring Tasha over here tomorrow morning and I’m sure I can talk some sense into her. She’s probably been just itching for another mission now that Fury’s got her doing paperwork. Just you wait, I bet she’ll be out the door and halfway through the city before we can say ‘ _wait, don’t shoot the bastard_.”

\---

“Absolutely not.” Natasha Romanov stood up abruptly, gun at her hip connecting loudly with the coffee table and nearly upending her and Tony’s glasses. With a curse, she turned to glare in Tony’s direction. “Is this what you had me come in through your window at 2 AM for?”

“Hey, don’t look at me,” Tony held up both his hands, looking placidly at her. “I never said you had to come in through the window. Besides, it was his idea.”

Steve look of betrayal almost made Tony feel bad. Almost. “Hey!”

Despite the protests, Natasha turned her full attention from an indignant Tony to the man at her left. Truth be told, he didn’t look even half the man he had been when the three of them had all been introduced for the first time. If anything, his dazed expression and the slight perplexed downturn of his lips could have been snapshots Tony had seen on the internet of Steve on his first trip back to Times Square. He looked lost.

“Why.” She asked, no trace of a question in her voice.

Steve finally sat heavily upon Tony’s expensive leather sofa. He didn’t even blink before replying, “It’s just something I need to do, Natasha. You don’t have to come, and I won’t be upset with you if you decide you don’t want to go against your comrades.”

Comrades. Right. Tony snorted more loudly than he’d intended and was forced to quickly cover it with a strangled choking sound and a sharp burning swig of alcohol. The clock hadn’t even struck ten AM and Tony was pretty sure Pepper would be furious if she knew. Good thing she was in Taiwan, because he was pretty sure he needed another drink ten minutes ago for this conversation. 

She stood, facing away from the two of them as she wrenched tony’s window open again. As she glanced back over her shoulder, something visceral seemed to pass between her and the soldier, something Tony wasn’t really sure he was meant to be a part of. The swift question wasn’t quite understanding, or agreement. No, it looked like acceptance. 

“Alright Rogers, I’m in.” Tony very nearly choked for real, which both Steve and Natasha chose to resolutely ignore (the bastards). “Night, boys.” She called, throwing them a smile as she slipped out again. It was as if she had a personal aversion to using Tony’s doors. 

After a slightly stunned silence, Steve cleared his throat. “So how are we going to convince Fury to let us borrow his car?”

\---

The sun was bright, the birds were singing somewhere, probably, and Tony was pretty sure he was going to meet his very untimely death at the hands of a super-soldier in stolen van, Die Hard style. 

The hum of the pavement was punctuated only by the almost audible sound of what Tony could only imagine to be Steve’s undying wrath. Tony momentarily worried that Steve might actually detonate due to the pressure, which would almost definitely get innards, intestine juice and half-digested health cereal bits all over the room of Fury’s car. When he voiced this concern, Natasha threatened to give him a defenestration that would, “actually kill you this time, Tony, I swear to God.”

Somewhere in the realm of the highly mechanized and gun filled back seat, Tony huffed indignantly and wondered if he could upgrade any of the tracking technology without getting a hole blasted through his abdomen. “And another thing,” He prodded experimentally at the ominous panels that lay flush with the metal curve of the van wall. “Why did Steve get shotgun? He never called it. Shouldn’t the man with the super awesome badass tracking technology get to be the co-pilot?”

“You just stole Fury’s van.” Steve’s explosion was not nearly as loud as Tony thought it might be.

“Oh, don’t go giving me all the credit, Cap, it was a group effort, after all. _We_ stole Fury’s van.” Apparently, it was the wrong thing to say, because all the way in the front seat, Steve turned around as far as he could manage, stared Tony right in the eyes, and spoke in his Captain America I’m-disappointed-in-you-son voice. “We stole from _SHIELD_. We’ll be lucky if we get out of this without several arrests and gratuitous gunshot wounds, never mind Bucky.”

“Hey, negative Nellie, don’t be like that,” The tablet that Tony still held clutched in his left hand blinked, and eerily cheerful blue among the artificial incandescent highlights. “According to my tracking-”

Natasha twisted around as well. “How does that work, exactly?”

“Reasons. Science.” Tony gulped as their vehicle swerved.

In the front, the residential super soldier was suddenly sitting ramrod straight as the highway lights of the city flicked by. “Shouldn’t you be watching the road?” he growled to Natasha.

“My reflexes are on par with yours,” Shrugging off his concern, Natasha ascertained her earlier argument as Steve’s side of the van narrowly missed running up on the curb, causing the monitor to beep shrilly. “That’s not a real answer, Stark. Guarantee you I’ll even understand.”

“ _Turn right onto 5th Avenue in - .3 – miles._ ” The GPS system said cooly. Despite Tony’s wariness concerning Fury’s enthusiasm for things that go bang near the heads of unsuspecting genius engineers, Tony had managed to hardwire his own personal StarkPad to SHIELDs surprisingly substantial navigation system.

“ _Turn coming up on your right in - .2 – miles._ ”

Now if only he could access the settings.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Romanov, but both my hands and at least a third of my brain are a little tied up right now.” Those earlier fingers of scotch hadn’t exactly given him an edge, either.

“ _Turn right onto 5th Avenue in - .1 – miles._ ”

Now where would the voice controls be? Tony scrolled to _Settings_ hopefully.

“ _Access denied._ ”

_Controls?_

“ _Access denied._ ”

Tony cursed rather lavishly; Steve frowned disapprovingly.

Natasha frowns. “See, told you we should have brought Banner instead, Bruce would be _pleased_ to tell me about his tracking system.” Somewhere out of the corner of his eye, Tony thought he could see Steve nodding vigorously.

“See, that’s rude. Especially to the guy who could be leading you both to you doom right now.”

Now where was that damn menu option? Tony Stark downright _refused_ to be locked out of a simple car direction system by anyone, _especially_ if that someone happened to be Director Nicholas Fury.

Hm. Back to menu… _Navigation?_

“ _Access denied._ ”

 _Details?_ _Full screen view?_ _Volume?_

“ _Access denied. Access denied. Turn right onto 5th Avenue – now. Access denied._ ”

Goddamn _Screen brightness_ \- wait a minute. Shit. “Natasha! Take the turn!”

“What? Now? But we just passed the last exit - ”

“ _Make a legal U-turn. Turn right onto 5th Avenue in - .1 – miles._ ”

If Tony’s life has a face, he would punch it. “Oh my God, _shut up_.”

“ _Tony!_ Where’s our turn? Is it this next street?” Natasha veered right sharply.

“ _Make a legal U-turn and proceed from – 4th Avenue. Turn right onto 5th Avenue in - .3 – miles._ ”

The sound of someone’s feebly smothered gagging added to the din, and Steve’s head reappeared in Tony’s field of vision, and _wow_ was he always that pale? “Uhh, Tony? Natasha? I’m not feeling too good. Can we pull over?”

“Anthony Stark, _where is our turn_ , we should be well out of this district by now-”

“ _\- Exit from – 3rd Avenue at the next available-_ ”

Steve hiccupped. “Oh jeez, I’m going to-”

If Tony’s life has a face, he would kick it in the balls.


	2. In Which Natasha Will Turn This Damn Stolen Van Around or So Help Her God

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Several edits were made to the first chapter (small detail type things), as I seem to have gotten a little excited and posted the chapter before I had read it through for a second time. Seeing the movie twice more also didn't hurt with my fact-checking. 
> 
> Also, constructive criticism is, as ever, always welcome and very much appreciated, just as long as it is something fixable. Thank you :)

There were eyes on the back of his neck; eyes that even now twisted and slipped within their sockets, tasked with peering around every corner he passed. Their scrutiny caused a nervous twitch in his right temple, and the fingers on his left fingers itched with a well-acquainted stultified ache.

He rolled his knuckles in their joints, letting the bones crack and snap against one another, imagining the crunch of the delicate skeletal bone cupping the eyes that would burst under his fist. Gently pressing the pads of his fingers – the real ones – against each other, the Winter Soldier envisioned the swell of blood from the threadlike network of capillaries just under the surface. The thought calmed him slightly.

His entire body felt like it was nearing the point of its rupture. The energy - the _drive_ \- still ran through his veins ceaselessly, but without a mark, it spilled, unhindered through the ducts of his frame, threatening to breach them from the inside.

The very force that used to drive his essence was eating him from the inside, turned against him. And the worst part was that he could feel every second of it. His temples pulsed and his eyes burned, each blink seared against soothing dark lids.

God dammit, he needed a coffee.

As soon as he entered the shop, claustrophobia overwhelmed his senses. The store was just another chain: small and cramped with blustering empty suits rushing this way and that.

He glared at the squat man wearing a loud red and navy tie who was currently halfway between rolling his eyes impatiently at his barista and telling her just how many _vital_ meetings he had that morning. There was no need to be impolite.

“Can I help you?” She asked, her words hastened with stress.

“Small coffee. Black, please. No cream, no sugar.” 

He glanced at her nametag. _Cassidy_ looked at him expectantly. “Name for the order?”

“Jack.” Nodding, she turned tiredly. The man to his left had his back turned to him, choosing instead to squint as he stirred a third packet of chemical diabetes into his drink. With a slight nod of his head, he accepted the warm drink labeled ‘Jack’ when they called out the false name.

The name was something of his own that he had selected long ago, although he could not remember when or why he had chosen that particular moniker. He sighed internally, wondering if he had ever been given the chance to choose at all. Perhaps - like the mission - it not been cultivated by his own creation, but instead transplanted from the hands of men who had no business playing in minds. They were harsh men. Cruel man. They lacked finesse, and when a task necessitated delicacy, they made up for their deficiency in brute force.

It was odd, he mused later on, that the first moment he felt the coil of tight momentum in his stomach unwind was at the first press of fingers on his shoulder. 

“May I speak with you outside?” The Winter Soldier was already moving before the man said a word, the controlled push of energy in his step once again. 

Together, they walked out into the watery early morning sun, and he turned abruptly to watch the shorter man slide his sunglasses up and over the brink of his nose. The man was balding slightly, and had a small coffee stain on the upper hand corner of his left lapel. Underneath, however, there was an air of cogency and competence. This man could probably out-shoot most of the DC police force without blinking. The assassin felt his lip curl. 

“Are you SHIELD, or HYDRA? Or is there a difference these days?”

“Well, someone’s been doing their history homework.” Unconcerned, the agent leaned up against the side of the brick building. When he next moved, a fine dusting of dirt came away on his suit.

Behind them, a dog barked, twice. Approximately 12 feet to their right, a young woman – a smoker from the quality of her tone – was headed towards them, talking on her mobile phone.

The Winter Soldier watched the agent in front of his intently. “What do you want?”

“I just want to take a drive with you.” The man spread his hands, an easy smile tugging at his lips. “My car’s around in the back lot, I figured you and I could talk.”

Suddenly the soldier was in the agent’s face, his long snarled hair hanging in tendrils, forming a curtain, and he breathed in the other man’s space. “I could break your neck in thirteen different ways.”

“But you won’t.”

Inside the shop, a man slipped and dropped several of the books he was carrying. Closing his eyes against the constant bombard of information, the Winter Soldier took a step back. In front of him, the agent carried on talking as quietly as if their positions had not changed.

“You won’t, because I know where you’ve been, and I know what you’re after, James Barnes.”

_He knew his name?_

“Don’t look so surprised, Bucky; do you really think we haven’t been keeping tabs on you? We saw you at the memorial exhibit in the Smithsonian. Even though you may not remember everything you lost, you’re looking for information. Information which it just so happens _I_ can give to you. So yes, I’m sure you aren’t going to kill me. Plus,”

The man leaned in, and if he hadn’t looked threatening before, he certainly did now, balding head, rumpled suit and all. “You’ve been keeping a pretty low profile, Barnes, and it’s not just because you know there’s still HYDRA agents on your tail. You’re afraid-”

“I’ve never failed on a mission. Never missed a target.” Not once, in over 70 years. That’s what they’d always reminded him. Twenty-six assassinations, all successful shots. That’s he’d always been told.

“But you’re afraid now.” The agent’s leaden grey eyes narrowed. “Because even if you don’t remember being in Saudi Arabia and shooting the Faisal Al Saud in the 70s, or the Prime Minister of Lebanon back in 2005, or even your attempt on the life of Director Fury, you do remember your fight with the Captain.”

“Steve Rogers.”

“Yes. Rogers. After shooting him four times, you nearly beat him to death, and I’m not sure which scares you more: the fact that he was an inch away from death or the fact that you _stopped_ within in an inch of his life. Face it, you don’t know _what_ it’s going to trigger if you were to kill me. If you ask me, I think it would be in your best interests to follow my orders, soldier.”

Opening his eyes again, the Winter Soldier - _Bucky Barnes_ , he supposed – allowed his gaze to flick up to the rooftops on either side. Two agents to his left and to his right, and three waiting behind them on the street. Standard Pincer formation. He followed in step when the good agent inclined his head.

Inside his jacket pocket, his left hand gripped his silenced pistol tightly.

\---

“Okay, I swear if I have to stay in this car for another ten minutes, I will be forced to carve a gun out of the seat foam and shoot myself” Stark groaned, seeming to forget that they were already in a van packed to the roof with guns. 

Natasha closed her eyes, briefly considering tossing Steve the wheel so that she might possibly have two moments of silence. So far, they’d been making fairly good time, but the morning rush of traffic was swiftly picking up and bringing their progress nearly to a crawl.

“We’re nearly to the coordinates you gave me, Tony. Care to explain that to the rest of the class now, by the way?”

“And…why a bank?” Moments ago, Steve had been feigning sleep (Natasha could tell that sort of thing, no matter how good an actor the Captain thought he was), but had perked up at the mention of an explanation.

Tapping a few commands into his StarkPad, Stark verbally set the device to run a final sweep of SHIELD’s database. “It’s not actually that complicated. Even though Nat with the help of the Capsicle dumped all of SHIELD’s secrets and classified documents onto the internet, there was a lot of just standard data on the hard drives that neither you nor Fury bothered to touch because it wasn’t really of much use.”

“Well I mean if it’s not of much use-” Steve interrupted, looking perplexed.

Stark chuckled, amused. “I meant that it wasn’t much use in exposing dramatic secrets. Ever since Asgard's Walking Blue Napoleon Complex rained alien worms down on the city, SHIELD’s been collecting and tracking energy signatures, and it just so happens that Barnes has a tracking chip attached to that robot arm of his courtesy of our dear friends over at HYDRA.”

Shrugging, Natasha turned her attention back to the traffic stretching out in front of them. It felt like pretty sound logic to her. “So what’s being kept this bank that’s so special? Why the fuss coming from both HYDRA and SHIELD?”

“Well, according to the file you nabbed for Steve, it was HYDRA’s temporary base of operations in DC. Now can we _please_ stop somewhere? I think I’m losing blood flow to my legs.”

“We just stopped at that rest stop on the way out of Delaware so you could pee _for the second time this trip_.” reminded Steve. 

“S’not my fault you guys have goddamn _bladders made of steel_ or something.” Stark grumbled, peeling his head to fall back against the black leather of the seats with a tacky sticking sound. “I swear, it was practically snowing last night, and now it’s in the mid-seventies-.”

“ _Current temperature is – 77 – degrees_.”

“Thank you, Fury’s van. Fury’s van – wait, do you even have a name?” Natasha rolled her eyes. Leave it to Tony Stark to drive every person in the car with him to drink, and then get friendly with the machinery.

“ _Negative_.”

“Well, you’ll need one. We can’t refer to you as Fury’s van for the entire trip, right guys?” When it became evident that no response was forthcoming, Stark sighed. “Fine. Be that way. CECIL, you and I don’t need these two suits. Oh, I know! You can help JARVIS and I download the new and improved navigational system to your hard drive.”

‘ _Who’s CECIL?_ ’ Steve mouthed, his brow furring and they both looked back at Stark, who seemed completely content to play with his technology.

‘ _No idea._ ’ She mouthed back. Personally, she didn’t care, just as long as it kept Stark busy for the remainder of the damn trip. Honestly, if she never had to be in any sort of confined vehicle with the man again, it would be too soon. 

Steve was frowning at her. “You ask him.” He muttered under his breath.

_‘Me?!’_ Natasha gestured silently to herself before making a frustrated sort of gesture that meant something along the lines of _‘can’t you see I’m busy handling a highly weaponized vehicle at nearly twice the speed limit?’_

“No, you ask him.”

“Fine.”

“ _Fine_.” She hissed back. Unbelievable, that’s what these two were.

Raising his voice, Steve spoke over the sound of Stark’s mindless chatter. “Tony?”

“Yes, Glamor-Pants?”

Natasha snickered as Steve let out a long-suffering breathe. “ _Who_ , exactly is CECIL?”

“Hmm?” Looking up, Natasha caught a flash of Stark’s wide grin in the mirror. “Fury’s van, of course. It stands for Captive Entity Co-piloting Illegal Liaisons.”

There was a momentary pause except for the beep of a horn somewhere in front of them.

Steve blinked. “Tony-”

“Just leave it.” She slowed the car, pulling up to the curb of the – all things considered, rather unassuming – Washington Memorial Bank. “Well boys, here we are.”

All things considered, it really just looked like a bank, and Natasha spared a moment to wonder if perhaps Stark’s tracking technology had made a mistake.

They quickly realized that it was not so, as the entry system through the front entrance proved near impossible for even Stark to get through (without sounding an alarm, that is). The three of them were forced to sneak through a well-hidden entrance near the rear of the building, most likely put in place for a quick exit. The door was old, and although it appeared to be made of stone like rest of the wall, it was layered with metals, making it impossible to open from the outside.

Then again, Natasha was fairly certain that the HYDRA architects hadn’t exactly been designing the space to be impervious to scientifically engineered super soldiers.

With a grunt, Steve bent the reinforced hinges back on themselves as Stark whistled. “Think this is where they kept him?”

“Must be,” Okay, maybe they should have considered genetically engineered super soldier in that case.

Out of the corner of her eye, Natasha scrutinized the tightly drawn lines around Steve’s eyes and mouth, the way his each step had suddenly become very purposeful. He didn’t say a word, even as Stark sat and began examining the blank computer screens against the wall.

The remaining three walls were covered in small, gilded, bank vaults that had been pulled out of their shelving. Several of the units were missing, and even more looked as if they had been wrenched out of their places in a hurry, left to hang crooked instead. 

The way the room had been left was almost eery, as if the people there had exited in a hurry, not even bothering to turn out the lights. She assumed that if there had been guards stationed, they would have come running already, and yet they all moved with apprehension, as if waiting for the advisories to just out at any moment. Natasha felt torn between wanting to remain as silent as possible, and wanting to scream just to alleviate the mounting tension. 

The bars and mechanized locks on all entrances didn’t help trepidation, even if they were just for appearance. 

Several cracked needles and a small welder remained on the floor, but apart from that, the room appeared to have been completely stripped. “SHIELD’s been here.”

“You’re telling me,” Stark said as he looked up from where he was attempting to boot up HYDRA’s technology “They just seem to have taken what they wanted and bailed; must’ve needed to get out with this stuff in a hurry.”

Steve remained silent. He walked over to a small monitor and ran his fingers along the edge, searching the seam where the wall of smaller lockboxes met the ceiling until found what he was searching for. “The security footage, is it still there?”

Tony’s attention didn’t deviate from the flashing screen for even a moment. “Not exactly, but the wipe on this system is so sloppy, I think a SHIELD intern could recover the files.”

Nodding, Steve went back to looking at…nothing in particular, as far as Natasha could tell. She shot him a questioning glance. _Are you alright?_ it asked. Steve, however, avoided her gaze. Whether accidentally or on purpose, she wasn’t sure.

Without warning, the screens began to blink on all around them. “And… _show time_.” Stark announced, spreading his arms and kicking back in the cheap rolling chair at the desk.

The voice of a man with a thick German accent emanated from the speakers. “ _Winter Soldier Project. Codename: Freezer-burn. Footage for archive file._ ”

Somewhere behind her, Steve let out an ugly noise. “Zola,” he sneered.

“Shh,” said Stark.

“ _Boys_ ,” snapped Natasha.

“ _October 14th, 1942. Italian deployed Unit 107 was captured yesterday near the city of Tønsberg._ ” A shot of several young men being interrogated by armed HYDRA agents speaking broken English. “ _Some are being sent to the West Wing for their knowledge in the weaponization and development of Valkyrie rockets. The specialized subdivision of the 107 will be taken to the East Wing for the Human Scientific Advancement Project, henceforth referred to as HSAP._ ”

Jump cut to the Howling Commandoes strapped to gurneys in what appeared to be a makeshift hospital room. “ _Private Timothy Aloysius Dugan_.” Pan in on Dum knocked out cold, tubes running from his nose, mouth, and into and out of the veins in his arms. A pulse monitor beeped silently nearby as the voiceover continues. “ _Private James Mortina. Private James Montgomery Falsworth. Private Gabriel Jones. Private Jacques Dernier_.”

All three waited with bated breath as the camera panned once more to the right. “ _Private James Buchanan Barnes._ ”

In the silence that followed, Natasha heard Steve’s sharp intake of breath, and she felt a sharp pang in her chest at the unhappy twist of his lips.

The footage ended abruptly, as if the person splicing together the footage together had done so rather hurriedly.

“Is that all-”

Almost violently, the next clip began with strangled, distorted words that were near impossible to make out. Bucky was lying at the scene of a train crash, blood staining the snow around him. His left arm was caught under the warped metal of the caved roof, and his shoulder was twisted at what was most certainly an unnatural angle. “ _February 7th, 1943. Only one identifiable member of Unite 107 survived the fall. Private James Buchanan Barnes, hereby known as Advancement Subject number zero-zero-three was the only survivor aboard the vehicle at the time of discovery._ ”

The drone of the Swiss scientist buzzed in Natasha’s ears as she took in the changing images in what could only be described as a detached manner. She could feel the waves of tension radiating off Steve as he was transported back to 1943 to relive the death of his best friend.

For Steve’s sake, if for no one else, Natasha wished that Bucky had died with the rest of the passengers after all.

\---

‘ _Please…please help me…_ ’ Steve watched Bucky beg silently as Zola detailed the specifics of his procedure.

He could feel a tear beginning to form on the inside of his cheek where his teeth bit into the soft flesh. _Bucky,_ he thought hopelessly. How long had he allowed his friend to suffer at the hands of those _bastards_?

“ _February 12th, 1943. Left arm has been deemed unrepairable, and has been removed. A cybernetic limb has been graphed to the skin which will allow for peak human strength, superior even to that of Captain America’s._ ”

“ _Although the graft went smoothly, the doctors were not accurately able to determine the correct amount of anesthetic necessary, and due to his metabolism, the medication wore off prematurely, leading to a violent episode that resulted in the injuries of two of my staff._ ”

Nothing could’ve prepared Steve for the footage he was about to witness. Bucky yet again lay strapped to a bed, but this time with thicker reinforced leather restraints and stripped down to a simple pair of cotton hospital pants. The instruments scattered on the table next to his head were wet and coagulating with congealed blood.

At first, Bucky appeared angry, throwing the doctor who had been performing the tests across the room and into a metal bed frame. As three more scientists moved in, the Zola in the film began to shout orders. ‘ _Tie him down, restrain him! He mustn’t damage the implant this early in the process!_

Bucky struggled desperately against the belts around his wrists and arms, but as Zola’s team closed in around him, the look of anger in his eyes changed to one of fear. ‘ _No!_ ’ He screamed, thrashing wildly, pulpy bruises already blooming around the tight cuffs. ‘ _No, stop! Stay away,_ stay away from me _! Don’t touch me!_ ’

‘ _Administering 300 milligrams of Pentobarbital._ ' A needle punched a hole through the muscle on Bucky’s right arm, and within seconds his resistance crumbled.

‘ _Patient stabilized_.’

Bucky lay on the examination table, fluid leaking from a burst IV tube as blood continued to seep from the seam of his mechanized appendix.

He looked dead.

Stomach lurching horribly, Steve bolted from the vault.

The city haze tugged at his exposed arms as he heaved onto the sidewalk. A few people stopped to stare - mostly children, who were quickly herded away by nervous mothers. He gulped lungfuls of smog-filled air, willing the tight, constricting sensation to leave his chest.

Captain America was a soldier. He had fought for his country even since he was able, sometimes in ways that kept him blinking, hours into the night. He had watched the burned skin peel off innocent civilians, and rescued cells full of tortured prisoners who were closer to death than they were to life.

He had shot pirates, bashed in the skulls of Nazis, and disfigured the arms and legs of SHIELD’s enemies.

And yet…the thing that had crippled Steve Rogers was the sight of a man undergoing an operation.

_Not just any man,_ He argued to himself, _Bucky._ Bucky Barnes, the boy he had played ball with, and who had given him his first cigarette; the friend who’d gotten him dates and stayed up with him the night he found out his mother had died. He was the man who had sat with Steve on the floor of Steve’s cheap apartment, surrounded by sofa cushions. The man who’d pulled the pillows in, forming walls on either side, just like when they were kids. He was the soldier that had pulled Steve’s ass out of the fire more times than either of them could count, and who had always worried about him during fights, even after Steve was the bigger of the two.

“God _dammit_ ,” Steve muttered, not bothering to wipe his cheeks.

“Hey,” From several paces away, Natasha leaned against the doorframe, propping the ruined metal open with her boot. “You hangin’ in there, soldier?”

“Yeah,” He cleared his throat with a wet cough. “Yeah, I’ll be alright. What did I miss?”

She looked concerned. The expression looked oddly out of place on her face when she spoke to him, almost as if she wasn’t used to letting the emotion contort her features. “Are you sure? We can just-”

“Tasha, please.”

Natasha let out a breath. “Stark’s finished watching most of the mission report; they’re mostly just assassinations from the past 70 years, anyway. HYDRA kept him on ice between assignments, which made it easier for them to reprogram him each time without starting over again. Coincidentally, it also lowered the rate of cerebral damage, though I’m fairly sure that wasn’t the original intention.”

“Steve?” He let out a slow breath, self-conscious of the irritated skin he could feel rimming each eye. “There’s…something else you should probably see. It’s dated the day before we stopped the Helicarriers. It was the Winter…it was _Bucky_. He recognized you.”


	3. In Which There Are War Flashbacks and Bucky Nearly Ends Up Getting Puddle Water in His Hair

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before the chapter I'd just like to give a super huge amazing thank you to be heaven-sent wonderbetaing best friend Sam who nitpicks these chapters in the best possible way. Working with her is one of the reasons this story has remained as fun as it has. (She also makes totally kick ass artwork and if you want to check that out, you can at joshieatemybaby.tumblr.com)
> 
> Thank you guys ever so much for the support. 
> 
> As ever, your comments, critiques, and constructive criticisms are always welcome and greatly appreciated.

Bucky sat as close to the window as possible, glaring a hole through the reinforced Plexiglas that separated himself and the agent. “Where are you taking me?”

He supposed it must be for the man’s protection, however ineffective it would prove to be in such a circumstance. Much as he loathed to admit it, the agent wouldn’t be needing it. Through the closed window, Bucky could hear cars passing them – no, their car overtaking others, as the pull of acceleration tugged at his stomach. The man driving the car must’ve left one of the front windows cracked open slightly, through which the wind whistled faintly. It was distracting, and Bucky wished to be rid of the noise. Instead, he blocked it out, focusing instead on the agent’s reply.

“I figured we’d drive tonight down to Cincinnati, and then tomorrow continue until we reach Chicago.”

Narrowing his eyes, Bucky felt the tension snap back into his body like a broken rubber band. “Who’s in Chicago?”

“Just some more people who want to talk to you.” The agent said, relaxed despite Bucky’s accusatory tone.

“Why are you _telling_ me this?” The frustration leached into his voice, although he tried to control it. It was difficult, he realized, to not let emotion bleed into the words. For so long, speaking had never been deemed necessary. In fact, the men who assigned him his mission hadn’t liked it when he’d spoken. They’d –

A dull pounding began to throb at his temples, and he pressed his remaining palm there. Well. He didn’t know what they’d done, but he knew that they didn’t like it when he spoke.

Removing his sunglasses, the agent regarded him with interest. “Why wouldn’t I? It’s not like you’re planning on contacting anyone to come and pick you up.”

“How do you-?”

“You haven’t made contact with any individual, HYDRA or not, in over four weeks.”

‘ _In case of mission failure, report to the Center of Operations immediately for assignment modification and details._ ’ The words resounded in his skull, _report back to the Center of Operations_. But he _had_ , only to find the building crawling with any number of enemies, poking and prodding at the equipment, shuffling through achieved files. He’d hidden until long past the falling of dusk, after all the busybodies and their nosey assistants had left for the day. The investigation team had changed all the locks on the vault doors, so he’d needed to sneak in, and even then had only had a few minutes before the alarms were shrieking his arrival.

Taking the physical files that had been left behind, forgotten, Bucky had fled, hidden by the shadows. The next several weeks had been a search, a hunt for something, _anything_ that might give him some direction, some clue about what he was supposed to do. History books proved to be invaluable, as did the exhibit at the Smithsonian.

Unlike the guards at the Air and Space museum, the librarians never looked at him with suspicion in their eyes. The first librarian that arrived to work in the morning had always let him in with a small pitying smile, which Bucky always endured with a jerky head nod and a rough ‘ _thank you_ ’.

“Considering the amount of time you’ve been out of cryogenic stasis, it’s a wonder you’ve remained as stable as you have.”

Bucky remained silent as the agent continued. “But it’s not going to last, Barnes. We have technology at our secure location in Chicago: doctors and scientists and scanners. They’re going to analyze the amount of cerebral damage you’ve received, and hopefully reverse the adverse effects.”

“You’re going to wipe me again.” It wasn’t a question. 

“We’re not reprogramming you, Bucky. You’ll still be able to-”

“No.” The words started out as a whisper, growing louder. “No. _No_.” When he’d always envisioned refusing his captors, Bucky always imagined there would be some feeling of gained independence, that he would lose the need and the desire for orders and assignments.

Instead, he just felt the cold fingers of dread creeping up his spine, and numbing his nerves.

“Assume, for a moment, that you have a choice in this. So much of your program has already deteriorated. SHIELD read the reports by Zola and Lukin. If this goes on for much longer, you’ll be a danger to not only yourself, but former agents of SHIELD and nearby civilians, and you know we can’t have that.”

_Bucky Barnes was a loyal and brave man: an honest person, and a good soldier_.

When he had gone to the Smithsonian, that was the first sentence under the heading _James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes_ and a picture of…himself, he had realized with a jolt. The hair was a lot shorter, sure, the eyebrows less drawn, and the mouth broad with a cocky smile, but it was obviously still _him_. The same blue eyes and rounded cheeks that had not quite melted off with age that he saw peering out at him from car windows and reflected in the sheen of his knives.

_A good soldier._

He had shaped the century, helped the world by pushing it towards peace. Pierce had said that it was a hard job, but Bucky didn’t think so.

_A good soldier._

He would go to Chicago, if HYDRA needed him back, then so be it. There was a war to fight, one that the Winter Soldier intended to win.

\---

Tony glanced up briefly as Steve and Natasha reentered the modified vault, before quickly busying himself with rewinding the delicate tape of the recording. If Cap sniffed once or twice, muttering ‘allergies’ even though pollen hadn’t affected him in over 70 years, well, Tony wasn’t about to call him out on it.

“Ready?” He asked quietly, as Rogers and Natasha exchanged another Significant Look.  
Somewhere in the back of his brain, Tony absently wondered if their newfound relationship was less to do with shared experience, and more to do with the kind of experience that one gained in the bedroom. Boy Scout Steve Rogers didn’t seem the type, but then again, if anyone could charm a leather cat-suit off a lady…

No. Focus.

“Mm.” Natasha nodded, and beside her, Steve seemed to steel himself for the footage.  
Feeling a lump rising in his throat, Tony swallowed quickly. “Sorry,” he said quietly, and hit play.

“ _July 18th, 2013. Advancement Subject number zero-zero-three, also known by the moniker the Winter Soldier was prepped several hours ago and assigned the task of taking down Captain America – otherwise known as Steve Rogers, and the Black Widow, who is currently going by the pseudonym Natasha Romanov, but was previously known in our system as Natalia Alianovna._ ”

If Tony had been expecting to see a reaction out of Natasha when she heard Zola announce her old name, he was mistaken. Not even a flicker of recognition passed over her face. The tape spluttered on.

“ _The Soldier was deployed along with two HYDRA attack squadrons yesterday with the intention of neutralizing Nicholas Fury, director of SHIELD. Mission was reported successful, with only minor setbacks._ ”

The audio from the video feed abruptly cut back in, and it was jarring, seeing Pierce and Lukin giving orders, victory already ringing in their ears. He knew the feeling. The finish line for them was so close, all they could see was themselves crossing the final painted line.

Reflexively, Tony checked over his shoulder, half expecting to see them standing there with triumph in the set of their shoulders and the pressed lines of their new suits.

‘ _The man on the bridge? Who was he?_ ’ Bucky’s face looked almost trusting, angled up from where he was perched uncertainly on the edge of what looked to be a modified dentistry chair.

Pierce was instantly dismissive, already signaling the lingering doctors to prepare for the next procedure. ‘ _You met him earlier this week on another assignment._ ’

‘ _I knew him._ ’

Turning slowly to give Bucky his full attention, Pierce seemed to consider for several moments, before speaking with the air of someone cajoling a misbehaving child. ‘ _Your work has been a gift to mankind. You shaped the century, and I need you to do it one more time._ ’ Pierce spoke only to Bucky, ignoring the doctors who had paused their preparations. ‘ _Society is at a tipping point between order and chaos; tomorrow morning we’re going to give it a push. But, if you don’t do your part, I can’t do mine, and HYDRA can’t give the world the freedom it deserves._ ”

It dawned on Tony that although HYDRA had tried to reprogram Bucky so they could start with a blank slate, they were ultimately unable to overwrite one thing: James Barnes, was, in the end, a good man. Pierce had been forced to appeal to Bucky’s misguided humanity, to convince him that what they were doing was honest work. Tony felt a sudden surge of pride for Cap’s old friend. HYDRA hadn’t been able to make him into the ruthless killer they so desired.

James Barnes was also a child of the military at heart.

Which made it all the more surprising when he turned those trusting blue eyes on Pierce, unable to do as he was asked, whispering, ‘ _But…I knew him._ ’

Pierce’s gaze turned callous as the false compassion drained from his features. ‘ _Prep him._ ’

‘ _But sir,_ ’ a nervous scientist spoke up, ‘ _he’s been out of cryofreeze too long._ ’  
Frowning, Pierce gestured impatiently to Rumlow, and the STRIKE commander typed the key code for the locked vault door. ‘ _Than wipe him, and start over,_ ’ He said with an impassive twitch of his eyebrow.

The feed cut out, but not before Tony saw Bucky, stricken but resigned, open his mouth to accept the mouthguard without so much as a prompting.

Tony guiltily clicked off the footage before the screaming started, but the damage had already been done. “Sorry Steve,” He muttered, suddenly feeling shame creep up the back of his neck. “I just…we thought you needed to see that.”

“Thank you, Stark, Romanov.” Half of Steve’s face was thrown into deep shadow by the fake yellow of the vault lights. His hands were balled at his sides and his jaw was set.

Natasha spoke up first. “Whatever you want to do, Captain, we’ll follow your lead.”

“Than let’s go.” Sunlight poured into the room as the ruined hinges finally gave way and crumbled under the Captain’s hands. Blinking, Tony gazed out into the street, wondering what the people driving by saw. He grinned and waved at two hunched teens eyeing them as they passed.

“We need to get out of here,” Tony growled. It would take the last of the SHIELD employees approximately 8.3 minutes to reach the bank from their last temporary base, and honestly Tony didn’t want to have to deal with the paperwork. “Let’s load up, gang.”

This time, when they all piled into the van and CECIL greeted them politely, Steve took the driver’s seat without comment. With not so much as a quirked eyebrow, Natasha smoothly slid in behind him, taking the seat that Tony had once occupied. Dammit. 

Carefully skirting Steve, Copilot Stark rebooted his genius technology only to find - 

Bucky wasn't’ there. Quickly scanning the digitized map, Tony thought he must be making some kind of mistake. Bucky wasn’t anywhere near the bank or surrounding shops. He wasn’t at the library, Smithsonian, or the elementary school (Tony quickly thanked his Norse god friends that Barnes wasn’t at the elementary school). Bucky wasn’t _anywhere_. 

Tony had a sneaking suspicion somewhere in the depths of his stomach that they weren’t going to find Bucky in Washington DC at all. And if he wasn’t in DC-

“CECIL, JARVIS,” He barked, mind whirring with the possible scenarios. Bucky had had somehow escaped DC under his own power. Bucky had managed to stop the tracking signal from his arm. Bucky had been kidnapped by HYDRA and was being reprogrammed as they sat in an old bank parking lot. Bucky was dead. “Scan the area, and I mean _the entire area_. Set the perimeter for the - hmm let’s see. 6 hours at 100 miles per hour - 600 miles. Set the perimeter for 600 miles and Check airports and airspace throughout the country, and _fast_.

“ _Already done, sir_.” JARVIS answered, cooley. “ _Mr. Barnes appears to be in an untraceable, unidentified vehicle. The driver and origins of said car are unknown, but there projected route appears to be taking them to Cincinnati, Ohio, population 296,550._ ”

“If the car is untraceable-” Steve began.

“It’s following the tracking signal is his arm.” Tony murmured absently, sitting back and looking more than a little perplexed. _Why the hell is HYDRA taking Barnes to Cincinnati?_

“HYDRA has a base in Chicago. That’s the biggest city within a few hours.” Responded Natasha, reading the lines of his face. “It makes sense. They’re probably stopping to spend the night at a secure location in Cincinnati before bringing to a more permanent location. They’ll most likely hold him until the media coverage and investigation of SHIELD and the Winter Soldier dies down.”

The apprehension hardens into a knot of tight muscles that make Tony’s stomach ache. “If they get Bucky there...”

“It’ll be nearly impossible to get him back out again.” Natasha finishes. “Steve, we need to leave as soon as possible. If we don’t get there in time-”

“We’ll get there in time.” 

Tony remembered what it felt like to go to war. The way that you set your shoulders, and pretend you felt something existential, some kind of serene calm. The way you pretend when, in reality, everything on the inside is numb and the names of your friends (Rhodey) and your family (Maria, the great Howard Stark) and your girlfriend ( _Pepper_ ) are making it hard to see what’s right in front of you. 

Tony knew what it felt like to stand on the brink of war; they all did. Maybe this was their last chance to drive back home and sit on their comfortable couches and drink fancy drinks and watch tv, or maybe it was already too late. Tony had no idea. 

Watching Steve turn the key and press his foot into the gas without so much as a tremor in his hands, Tony knew that he wasn’t thinking of home or a warm couch or the cute nurse-who-was-not-a-nurse (Natasha had told him) that lived next door. Steve didn’t notice even the painted lines the highway, because all he could see was Bucky, cut open and strapped to a gurney, right in front of him the whole ride there. 

\---

The agent pulls his car into the rain slicked parking lot of what surprisingly appears to be a motel. Bucky doesn’t allow his confusion to translate onto his face, instead focusing on the intermittent beads of glass falling and scattering themselves against the car windshield. They’d been driving all day, the nearly 503 miles stretching between themselves and Washington falling away to pine trees and stretching fields. 

Before he had gotten out of the car, Bucky had unconsciously noted all the security cameras (six, it total, proving that the motel was indeed a secured government facility) and the number of routes he could take in order not to be captured on film (only one, and it involved scaling several walls). He therefore allowed himself to be handcuffed in what he could only assume to be very advanced restraining handcuffs. Probably built for him, too. How nice. 

Nevertheless, it still came as a surprise when his left arm suddenly fell like a dead weight against his side, causing him to nearly overbalance into a puddle. 

“I’m sorry.” The agent looked nearly apologetic, the bastard. 

The sound of cars passing on the freeway was just audible beyond the long drive of the motel. Before he was restrained, there were three possible escape routes, only one of which involved having to outrun an armed agent. Bucky squared his shoulders, tensing his body. 

The minutes yawned in front of them, threatening to swallow him up. His entire body was poised and coiled, waiting to strike like a snake hidden in the grass. 

But he wasn’t hidden at all, he was exposed, and the chance of him escaping was between 6 and 7 percent. Excluding the scenarios that involved fatal injury, the number dropped to maybe 3 or 4. Those were risky odds, even for him. Bowing his head, Bucky forced his shoulders out of their rigid lines, all traces of combativeness gone kept at bay when the agent grabbed him none too gently and frog-marched him into the lobby. 

After that, the facade of the motel peeled away like gossamer. Bucky could detect the groaning of the floorboards as the occupants in the rooms on the left side of the narrow building paced endlessly behind closed white doors. The walls were painted a bare and grimy white, with nothing hung on their faces, save for a small curtain window. What would have been the front desk was bolted down and reinforced. Another agent sat behind the steel frame, clicking away at a tiny computer. She glanced up briefly, nodding at Bucky’s agent before returning whirring machine. 

“Rooms 6,8, and 9 are open, sir.” She said without glancing up again, handing the man a key. The key wasn’t like most that you’d expect to find in a hotel. It was heavy and simple, made to last and fitted for a much heavier lock than most jail cells. 

To Bucky’s chagrin, the female agent motioned the two of them towards the left half of the building; even from where he was standing Bucky could practically hear the sounds of the animals pacing in their cages. Dangerous men that needed to be contained, locked away with the key thrown down a drainage pipe. Men who placed their rooms, running fingers along any perceived cracks in the steel plated wall. Men like _him_. 

Bucky could feel his calm begin to fray at its edges. How many of these people had seen him before, would recognize his glare and his stride and the way he squeezed a trigger? Only Lukin and Pierce knew how many toes he had stomped playing out their vision of world peace. 

In his mind’s eye, he saw their fingers hovering on the edge of his peripherals as the agent shoved him forcefully into room 8. As the light trickled from the room with the closing door, Bucky envisioned harsh calloused fingertips closing around the delicate white skin of his throat, squeezing and squeezing and _squeezing_ until he gasped awake. By then it would be too late. He would see the whites of their eyes, glimmering in the gloom until his world faded out into shadows. 

Internally, Bucky shuddered. The walls. The walls were too close. He sat opposite the bed with the white cotton sheet, back pressed against yellow plastered metal. There was only one window, which was placed high on the wall to his right. The hole was open to the breeze, separated with a thick iron grid so that no more than the tip of a ring finger could fit through to the lot beyond.

There were ears pressed against his walls on all sides. _Lissten_ the prisoners to his left and right hissed with mirth. _He’ss right insside. Now we only have to wait until he ssslips..._

Sitting militarily straight, Bucky stared until he nearly burned a hole in bedframe, shuffling until he could maneuver his useless metal appendix into his lap. His pupils blurred, and the organs began to weep until tears were running down his cheeks, but the Winter Soldier hardly noticed.  
 _6 hours and 42 minutes until sunrise_ , he thought automatically.

_If those motherfuckers think they can catch me so much as twitch, they’ve got another thing coming,_ spoke a boy in a language that was not his own. He shook his head, trying to rid himself of the second voice that plagued his thoughts. The echo of a man, locked in his skull, who had made himself known when he rattled the bars of his cage and _screamed_ at the sight of America’s patriot. But now as not the time.

The Winter Soldier was a weapon already cocked with the safety undone, and he could not afford distractions.

He sat patiently, mouth drawn tight and the hand wrapped around his mechanized fist drawn tighter still. The night paused.

Outside, several pebbles skittered across the blacktop, and the moment shattered like carpals crushed under the weight of a slamming car door.


	4. In Which Steve Should Probably Get Some Ice For Those Multiple Concussive Head Wounds

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh god, it's been so long. Well hey guys, how've you been? Life kicked my ass for a couple months there, but hopefully Summer will bring more time for writing. 
> 
> As always, a big huge wonderful thank you to the ever perfect Sam (my wonderbeta extraordinaire) for kicking this chapter into shape (again). Seriously, she's the best, and she lives over at joshieatemybaby.tumblr.com if you ever feel like giving her some love. 
> 
> As always, I look forward and always appreciate your questions, comments, and constructive criticisms. You guys are the best.

Steve watched in abject horror as the twig snapped and broke under Natasha’s light step. Instantly, the three of them froze.

“ _Romanov,_ ” hissed Tony, rubbing unconsciously at the gauntlets encircling his wrists.

Natasha, however, ignored both of them, instead standing, her uniformed form standing taut. “Natasha? What is it?” Asked Steve nervously, noting the way her face changed to a carefully put-upon blank mask whenever her eyes lit on the building. Suddenly, it dawned on him.

 _I should have known_ , he thought bitterly. “This is SHIELD, isn’t it?” When she didn’t answer him immediately, some of the stain bowing his shoulders leeched into his voice and he turned seized her by her shoulder. “They’re supposed to be reassigning their final branches this month; Agent Romanov, did you neglect to mention some details? Because this is the kind of thing we would have _needed to know about_ -”

“Will you _shut up_?” She hissed rounding on him suddenly, throwing his hand off her. Natasha stepped backwards, illuminated by nothing save the sweeping car beams from the thoroughfare. “I didn’t know SHIELD was planning on taking him into custody, alright? I told you what Fury told me – the case was closed. No more investigations, no pursuits, but-”

“ _But apparently_ you didn’t think that sounded suspicious?” Steve interrupted angrily.  
“Uh, guys.” Tony eyed the windows of the motel room apprehensively. The entire building seemed eerily quiet. He could practically feel the scrutiny of the cameras lifting the hair on his arms. “I really think-”

“You were willing to take the risks!” snarled Natasha, “SHIELD, HYDRA, it didn’t make a goddamn difference to you either way. All _you_ cared about was-”

“ _Guys_. Look, these windows open from the outside.” Both Steve and Natasha froze where they stood, fists clenched and mouths still open in what must have been a comically cartoon scene.

There was a moment a tense stillness, and Steve stepped forward tentatively. Could it really be that easy-?

Tony grinned broadly, and all hell broke loose.

It was all over in a matter of moments. Without warning, there was a sickening crush of bone-on-metal as Tony crumpled where he stood, revealing the agent behind him. Steve whirled, jabbing widely into the outstretched darkness without a second thought.

“Agent Romanov!” He shouted, grabbing the wrists of one attacking agent and kneeing him in the stomach. The man dropped the taser he was holding. No doubt it was probably manipulated to make its recipients fall into instant comas or something equally as horrifying and completely illegal, and brandished it threatening.

The commotion had drawn more armed SHIELD personal out from their hidden posts, all advancing rapidly. “Natasha?” He called out, a little desperately, attempting to search through advancing advisories, hoping to see her covering Stark.

 _This wasn’t supposed to happen this way_.

Steve wished he could close his eyes again, and wake up back in his apartment. If he could try again, he would’ve grabbed Bucky’s file, and ran like hell ‘til he found him. Steve thought wryly in retrospect that if he hadn’t spent days agonizing over betraying Fury’s trust, he wouldn’t have found himself coursing with enough electric charge to bring him to his knees. As they closed restraints around his arms and ankles, despair closed around his throat, choking off any final cries he might have made.

Steve slumped, his palms shaky and sweating, pushed so hard to the ground that he could feel the skin begin to split against the rocks. They had come all this way, only to fail. It was over.

\---

Feeling the prickling sensation in the fingers of his flesh-and-blood hand fading out into dull throbbing waves, Bucky hung, suspended from the bars of his cage. He’d seen them, when they’d dragged America’s hero, already incapacitated through their welcoming doors.

As the ceiling pressed in close, he waited, watching until the sun cut over the horizon, slipping rays between the tree branches and spilling blood onto the sky. It was roughly 1500 hours when he’d slipped, silent as a specter, in between the cracks in their sight and out onto the floor.  
Once pressed against the door of room 07, he stared out into the expanse of blank hallways with barely contained shock. The Winter Soldier had anticipated the necessary immobilization of guards, - possibly by snapping their necks, which would be possible even without the use of his animatronic limb. 

His body ran through the motions of the mission without impute from his higher functions. His mind was still racing, adjectives churning just beneath the surface: the captain, the hero, the mission, the savior, _the mission_ , the friend, the target, the _mission_. He had to find him. The Soldier’s teeth were bared, splitting the skin of his lower lip as his face contorted into an ugly grimace. The image of the Captain’s face was somehow just out of reach, as if every time the Winter Soldier tried to focus on it in his memory, it slipped away, through an unseen fracture in his skull; it was infuriating.

He had to _find_ him, get to him, twist his fists into those pleading eyes, the disappointed curl of his mouth, still encrusted with blood and pathetic. Weak. That’s what the man gave him. Weakness. He had gotten _into his head_ somehow, compromised him from the inside. It was as if his head had been split wide open, brain spilled and ready for the taking by the scientists, Zola and then Lukin; what was another finger in the pie?

There was one lone figure, standing in brave vigil outside the Captain’s door. The Soldier almost felt bad, taking another agent from SHIELD’s emaciated stock.

But he does, and he no longer feels the twinge in his chest when the body falls (he hasn’t in a long time – longer than he can remember). The door looms ahead, foreboding only in its contents. Stealing a knife from the innermost pocket of the agent’s vest, he crept inside, leaving the hallway empty once more.

\---

Steve allowed himself to be manhandled into the building, past the desk he knows is for security surveillance instead of checking in, and into room 01. But he draws the line when they try to handcuff him to the bed using the same magnetic cuffs Rumlow had attempted to secure him to an elevator shaft with. Lashing out blindly, Steve felt the nose of the guard nearest to him crack under his knuckles. They’d made a hasty retreat after that, leaving him suddenly and rather painfully alone with nothing but a bruised hand for company.

The night stretches on in front of him, before the sound of creaking metal instantaneously snapped the former army captain from his uneasy slumber.

For a moment, Steve allows himself to stare, and the tightness that had been smothering his chest lessens (just a little).

Bucky sat, cross-legged, in the center of Steve’s floor, staring laser-hot holes through Steve’s rib cage. He looked somehow smaller than he had in DC, despite the ratty black sweatshirt he was wearing, as if he had lost weight . The familiar plumpness to his cheeks had been carved out to form harsh ridges and angles, throwing his thinned mouth sharply into contrast.

He stood, suddenly and swiftly, taking a threatening step towards Steve. “What have you done to me?” Bucky hissed, drawing his arms protectively around himself.

“I - what?” Pressing his back to the wall, Steve looked at Bucky imploringly. His eyes searched desperately for some trace of his best friend behind the flinty glare. “Bucky - I _swear_ , I haven’t done _anything_ -”

Bucky snarled. “ _Shut up_. I don’t care who you are, I’m not your _pet_ ,” He spat the word viciously, and turned his back in disgust. “I’m not your _Bucky_ , and I never will be. Your programming has failed. I’ll only ask once more: get _out_ of my _head!_ ”

Bucky staggered slightly further away from Steve’s bed, clutching at his head through hair, as if he could keep himself together from sheer force of will alone. It physically pained Steve to watch, but he feared the consequences if he reached out. Were these the effects of Steve’s own words in DC, or was this the deterioration of the Red Room’s programming over time, just as Bucky’s file had predicted?

Tentatively, Steve laid a hand on Bucky’s hunched shoulders.

“Don’t touch me.” His voice was hollow and cold, devoid of any of the previous fear. They betrayed nothing about the condition of its owner.

Steve shut his eyes tightly, recalling the image of Bucky that he’d treasured in his mind. Back when Steve had been ten and scared and living at the orphanage. James “call me Bucky” Barnes, dancing eyes and devil-may-care grin, five-foot-five by age twelve and fiercely protective. Holding the snapshot just behind his eyelids, Steve opened his mouth. “I haven’t done anything to you but tell you the truth. The programming – the Soviets and Zola, I saw it. The footage at the HYDRA base in DC where you were held. They stole your memories, stole _you_ -”

“I don’t _belong_ to you.”

“No, they didn’t steal you from _me_ , they stole you from – you.” _They took you from both of us._ “What they did to you, they had no _right_. I – I would never. I could never do something like that to you.” For a moment, Steve wished that he had grown up a writer instead of an artist. What he wouldn’t give to make the words come smoothly and effortlessly. He’d always been able to give a rousing speech, when the time came to inspire his soldiers into battle, but somehow this seemed - more important than that. He felt awful for even thinking such a thing – the lives of tens of highly trained men versus the mind of one soviet assassin? Logically, the equation was obvious.

And yet…

“Bucky please,” He prayed that he could say the right thing, where it really counted . He needed to somehow put a voice to his want to _fix this_ and his _hatred_ (there was no other word for it, even though he knew that to hate was a terrible thing). If Steve could have had it his way, he wouldn’t say anything at all. Instead, he would simply fold Bucky into his embrace, in a way he never used to be able to. Years ago, he would’ve reached up and smoothed away the worry lines and the tension headache he knew was building behind Bucky’s temples away with his thumbs. He would’ve -

No. That Bucky ( _his_ Bucky) was gone, and he wasn’t coming back. Steve would do well to remember that.

“...I could never do anything to hurt you,” finished Steve, somewhat lamely. Bucky didn’t reply, instead lifting himself off the floor and without so much as a footfall, pressed himself into the dark space where the walls met. “Bucky?” But it was as if he was no longer there.  
“Steve.” Natasha’s hand was suddenly gripping his upper arm, and Steve pulled back on reflex. Damn, he hadn’t even heard the door open.

“How did you-?” Her answering coy smile would’ve normally made Steve roll his eyes, if he wasn’t so grateful to see her.

The grin faded from her lips, and when she spoke, it was to the room at large. “You’ve gotten sloppy, James.” There was no response.

“We have to hurry,” Steve implored earnestly. It was nearly morning, and when the next shift of agents came in and saw the Winter Soldier missing, all hell was going to break loose. How they hadn’t already been discovered via the security feed was a mystery to him, but one he planned to ponder _after_ he got he and Bucky and Nat and Tony -

Tony.

“Natasha, where-”

“Stark's already out.” Bucky was leaning against the wall, posture hostile but somehow more like himself than Steve had seen in _years_. “Left 13 minutes ago, 9 minutes after Natalia disarmed and slit the throats of two guards. Poor form; very messy.”

“He’s scouting out possible secure locales in the suit.” Natasha informed Steve tersely. Looking directly in front of her at nothing, she said, “There’s no way you could know that, James.”

Pushing away from the corner, the soldier turned to leave. “Alarms. Four of them. One for each lock broken tonight. The surveillance units switched from ‘monitor’ to ‘record’.” He paused, smirking. “You’re getting sloppy, Natalia.”

Steve’s mind reeled. If SHIELD already had footage of he and Natasha breaking the Winter Soldier out of (albeit it, illegal) SHIELD custody, it would be Project Insight all over again. And this time, Steve wasn’t sure how worried SHIELD would be with their PR.

His whole world shifted into tactical advantages and strategy. “We need to leave. Now. Once we get the van a safe distance away, we can contact Stark and work from there. Let’s move.”

“You two better get moving.” To Steve’s dismay, Bucky made no move to follow.

“No.” Natasha shot him a piercing glare, but Steve was already shaking his head, ignoring her. “Bucky - no. We came all this way - for you. There’s no way I’m going to just _leave_ you here with those men. Bucky, they’ll kill you.”

Steve could physically _feel_ Bucky slipping away from him, falling back, back, back through history. Any hope of reclaiming his best friend sliding neatly back into the scrapbook pages of his memory. And no, _no_ , he couldn’t, he _won’t_ , even as Bucky bears his teeth and him and snarls, “ _Leave_ ”. He finds himself reaching down, down, struggling for Bucky’s hand once more as he falls further and further away (Steve can’t lose him again). Feeling the memory clawing its way out of his stomach and up his throat, Steve hurls the words that Bucky once used against him right back.

“ _No, not without you!_ ”

The effect was instantaneous. Bucky’s eyes widened almost imperceptivity, before he shrank to his knee, shaking his head roughly. “No, _no, stop it!_ ”

“Steve, _don’t_.” Natasha gasped. “He’s _unstable_.”

“Please, _please_ , make it stop-”

Steve impatiently shook off her restraining hands. “He’s _hurt_.”

“ _Get out of my head!_ ”

“ _Steve_ , you're too close to him.”

Steve fell into a crouch beside him, unconsciously, _unthinkingly_ reaching out, trying to help, to make it _stop_ -

“Don’t _touch_ me!” Bucky Barnes gasped, throwing all his weight behind the useless metal arm still cuffed in front of him. Snarling, he launched himself at Steve, who barely had time to blink before the ceiling was spinning and Bucky’s breath was hot in his ear.

The world began to blur at the corners as cold metal was pressed into his windpipe. Steve could vaguely hear the sound of Natasha shouting to him from a distance, but he found that he wasn’t all that concerned. Even his useless struggles were growing more and more feeble as he desperately tried to pry off the arms of a trained killer.

Jesus, he was tired.

Steve had fallen so far into the jaws of sleep that he almost didn’t feel the kiss of a blade as it pressed into the tissues up and under his ribcage. As the knife retracted, he could feel the warm pulse of blood swell purple and pulpy under his skin. He coughed wetly as the fluid filled the damaged lung.

Steve is twelve. Steve is twelve again, and he has pneumonia. Despite all his assurances of ‘ _you’ll be just fine, kiddo_ ', Bucky has a furrow between his brow and worry lines around his eyes.

Sometimes, in between periods of fever-hot dreams blurring into wakefulness, Steve has moments of lucidity where he sees Bucky mopping the sweat off his forehead with one of their old shirts dipped in cool water. Once, he thinks he even sees Bucky spoon feeding his broth from a chipped mug. Steve brushes the memory off later, because where would they have gotten the money for chicken stock when they barely had enough for cheap vegetables that week?

Sometime later, and it feel like years later to Steve, he was blearily aware of a pair of strong arms twining under his armpits to fasten around his chest and haul him out of the slowly growing puddle of his own blood.

“Steve?” Howard’s concerned face swam into view. No, Tony’s face. Howard was dead, it was decades after the second World War had ended -

It was 1928, and Bucky’s scared voice was filtering into his thoughts, nearly getting lost in the white noise that buzzed in his ears. ‘ _Steve? Steve, c’mon buddy, just open your eyes for me, there you go. Here, take a sip, it’s just water._ ’ The cool rim of a glass brushed his lips. ‘ _Whoa! Watchit, don’t spill - here, I’ve got it._ ’

His skinny chest heaved as he fought and kicked for each breath, fighting the rising tide of infection that filled his lungs. ‘ _Buck,_ ’ He wheezed, dribbling the water all down the front of his shirt. ‘ _Buck - am I - am I gonna -_ ’

‘ _No._ ’ Bucky was shaking his head, but all of a sudden, he looked wrong, like a bad nightmare had come in and swirled its fingers in Steve’s memories, distorting them. Bucky’s hair was long and shaggy; it fell in tangled tresses that framed his face, and there was a scar above his right cheekbone. Steve flinched when he saw that the wound had been only centimeters away from cutting into Bucky’s eye.

Steve opened his mouth to call to him, but Bucky was already sliding and fading and _slipping_ away and through his fingers.

 _Bucky_ , his brain begged, searching. He had to be somewhere, he couldn’t be _gone_ -

_Bucky_

“ _Steve!_ ”

 _Not again_ …

“ _-I don’t care; it’s too much blood, this man needs a hospital, I don’t care what shit they stuck in his veins-_ ”

‘ _Just stay with me, Stevie, c’mon now_ ’

Steve gave up the struggle to open his eyes, and blindly followed Bucky’s voice back home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~A brief interlude written by my editor, the ever-lovely Sam~
> 
> "-My portion of this fic:  
> Bucky: Steve lets frickle frack  
> Steve: I came out to have a good time and im honestly feeling so attacked right now"


	5. In Which Our Heroes Take a Stroll Down Memory Lane and There Are Feelings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow remember when I said that Summer would bring more chapters? Apparently that was a dirty, dirty lie. I know it seems like everyone is settling down in this chapter, but I promise, the fun's only just beginning (oh god, someone please hit me. I actually just typed that). 
> 
> Anyway, a million and one thanks to Sam who kicks some serious ass: mine, the chapter's, this story's, Steve's. It's great. 
> 
> You guys are seriously the best readers anyone could ever ask for <3 so please, take my love, affection, first born son, this chapter, and some freshly baked cookies. As ever, I look forward to and always appreciate your questions, comments, and constructive criticisms.
> 
> (add: as of 3:33 in the morning. I'm so sorry for those of you that read the chapter tonight. The formatting was about 30 different types of wrong and it took me about 2 hours to get it right. Won't happen again, I promise!)

It was cold. Steve was cold, and he was huddled on a train. On a train? No, a car -  _van_ , his mind supplied.  _No_. He was on a train; it was snowing. There were still fresh tear stains laying lacy patterns across his cheeks.

“ _How’s he holding up?_ ”

There was seat leather behind his back and the feel of the road vibrations in his bones. His head was cushioned on something soft - A jacket? He attempted to call out: ‘W _here are you?_ ’, when he suddenly and very personally became acquainted with a shooting pain in his side.

Tony was driving. Or, mostly driving anyway. From the way he sat, twisted in the seat to look Steve over with a concerned gaze, Steve was fairly certain that CECIL was doing most of the steering for him. The jacket under his head shifted, and he looked up to find Natasha throwing a curious look over her shoulder before turning back to him. “Puncture wound. Nicked your liver and the lower lobe of your right lung.”

“You seem to be mostly out of the woods, now.” Tony cut in. “I mean, it was a little touch-and-go for a little bit until your hyper-healing kicked in, but Romanov seems to have stitched you up fairly well.”

“We had to get him out of there before SHIELD showed up.” Natasha’s mouth was pursed, lips thin, as if she had just tasted something bitter.

Before Steve had the chance to ask where Bucky had gone, a low, angry sound, like a wounded animal caused the hairs on the back of Steve’s neck to stand on end. He was already on his knees, ignoring the burning between his ribs. He was reaching for the nearest solid object, which just happened to be some Starbucks, and then-

Steve started, shrinking back. “...what did you do to him?”

Tony snatched his half-drunk coffee back from where it was sloshing dangerously in Steve’s hand. “Apparently Natasha remembered one of Barnes’ crazy Russian kill codes, and totally-”

“It’s not a  _kill code_ ,” Natasha snapped. “It’s an emergency shutdown, in case he lost control while they were trying to program or wipe him.”

Bucky glared from the visible trunk of the car, his body held uncharacteristically still. Steve watched as Bucky’s eyes darted from the window, then back to their faces. With sudden, vivid clarity, Steve remembered the way that Pierce and Lukin had strapped Bucky to their chair. The sight of him restrained once again against his will made Steve want to tear at the straps until they fell away. But what was he to do when the confinement was mental?

They sat, steeped in uneasy tension for the rest of the ride, save for Tony’s feeble joke when they reached the safe house.

“Is this another SHIELD location?” Steve asked, before any of them exited the vehicle. The idea that he might not be able protect his own if it came down to it made the line of his back tighten.

The trees swayed above their heads and Steve held his breath as Natasha climbed out of the van only to disappear around the corner of the house. They were parked at the end of a driveway, staring up at a simple house with peeling paint and a few scraggly bushes in front to hide the cement foundation. Across the road sat a convenience store, and down the street he was pretty sure he could see a gas station. Steve crossed his arms over his chest. The domestic atmosphere was making him wary, and he made sure to keep one eye on Bucky as Natasha scanned the perimeter.

Despite the strangeness of the hour, Steve was exhausted and ready for bed. The sun was just beginning to shine cheerily over the top of the treeline, and Steve closed his eyes against the light. After ensuring that their location was indeed secure, Natasha and Steve had collected a now docile and scowling Bucky from the trunk and had led him to a counter stool. Steve was still slightly concerned about the clouded and unfocused quality to Bucky’s eyes and the way he was lilting dangerously to one side.

Tony fished around in one of the cabinets to pull out an unopened box of cheerios, and for a moment, the three of them simply stared at each other. Bucky stared at nothing.

Feeling his nails biting into his palms, Steve swallowed. He could see Tony’s eyes and even Natasha’s tired gaze asking him ‘ _what do we do now?_ ’ Steve knew he was the one who had gotten them all into this, and now they were looking to him, expecting him to have some sort of plan. Anything, really. But as Steve stared at the soldiers that he had dragged into a battle they had never asked to fight, all he could feel was a lump building in his throat. Steve coughed slightly, squaring his shoulders and mentally drudging up a comforting word or two.

“We’re safe to stay here, at least for a little while, so I suggest we all get to sleep even though it’s,” Steve glanced at the digital clock above the microwave and winced internally. “-almost 5:30 in the morning. Tony and Natasha, you guys get some sleep, God knows you’ll probably need it. I’ll sit with Bucky.”

“Listen, Rogers, I’m not questioning you mile-wide self-sacrificing streak,” Stark shifted awkwardly, speaking to the cereal box in his hands, “but are you sure that you’re really the man for the job? After Barnes tried to filet you back there-”

“No,” Tearing her analytical stare away from Steve’s knotting fingers, Natasha turned to Stark. “If he had tried to kill Steve, he would already be dead.”

And with Natasha’s words weighing heavy on Steve’s subconscious, they all drifted their separate ways. Although they were sharing the same physical space, Steve felt more isolated than he had in a long time. It reminded him of when he was still freshly pulled from the ice, placed in a state of the art SHIELD monitored apartment and left to his own devices. In those days, Steve used to wander the city - or the parts he thought he might still remember - for hours on end. He imagined Bucky, scared, confused, and lost, padding silent as a morning mist down the streets of Brooklyn, not knowing that their old apartment building had burned down a long, long time ago.

Steve was still lost in thought when he led Bucky into the spare bedroom gently pulling him until they were both sitting on the mattress. After several seconds, it became abundantly apparent that Bucky wasn’t going to do anything of his own free will. In the back of his mind, a fretting voice worried that maybe he  _couldn’t_  do anything unless programmed to. But no, Steve reminded himself. That couldn’t be true. Bucky had more willpower than the entire Allied army put together. The idea that he was to be treated like of SHIELD’s fancy new computer’s made Steve want to grab his shoulders and shake until the fog clouding his guarded expression vanished.

Steve didn’t move. “Alright. Well, um, you can have the bed, and I’ll just - well, I’ll just sit over here.” Motioning awkwardly to the desk chair up against the wall, Steve winced as Bucky’s expression tightened and he turned away, lying on top of the mattress.

He was just beginning to drift off himself, the hard wood of the chair biting into his spine, when he heard the door deliberately creak open. Steve nodded in greeting as Natasha strode purposefully to the side of the bed and bent to whisper into Bucky’s ear. Straightening slightly as Bucky’s entire body relaxed, she stoked fingertips through his matted hair. She allowed a smile to tug at the corners of her mouth as she spoke again in Russian. Somewhere in her soft phrase, Steve caught the name ‘ _James_ ’.

But he didn’t ask. Even as Natasha gave him a pitying look and explained that it would be best for Bucky (Steve didn’t miss how close ‘James’ was on her lips) if she was the only one with knowledge of his codes, he didn’t ask. Instead, he nodded, keeping his expression carefully neutral.

Suddenly, Steve thought, it was as if everyone knew Bucky better than he did. And he knew it sounded petty, even in his head, but something about Natasha and Zola and the KBG owning pieces of Bucky’s life that Steve didn’t even have a place in made his skin crawl. Those scientists had cut into the muscle in his arm, probably memorized and connected the strands of his nerves, and Steve? What did he have? A handful of stolen kisses compared to Bucky’s brain.

Seventy-some-odd years ago, Bucky would have slung an arm around his shoulders and said that ‘ _there ain’t_  nobody’ that knew him better than Steve. Even after Steve was no longer 90 pounds soaking wet, Bucky’d told him that it didn’t matter. It didn’t change anything.

‘ _Now the outside just matches the inside a little better._ ’ Bucky had confided in him in the days of the Commandoes, the light of their fire playing on the side of his face that Steve could see. And Steve had be so tempted to lean under Bucky’s arm and ask him which he prefered. But the other Commandoes were still shifting in their tents and Steve was too tall to slip under Bucky’s arm like he used to.

That, and he was afraid of the answer.

Bucky rustled sleeplessly as Steve sat lost in thought in the desk chair just out of reach. Had they been in Brooklyn, Steve would have climbed in next to him, curled his arms around Bucky’s anxiously beating heart. If he closed his eyes, Steve could still remember the scent of Bucky’s freshly scrubbed skin pressed under his cheek, but if he pulled him close, Steve was sure that the person under him would be practically a stranger. With a jolt, he wondered if this was how Bucky had felt when the body he used to hold close under his fingers no longer felt the same.

Steve’s stomach lurched. Was he even doing the right thing? Bucky needed medical attention, help that Steve could never even hope of providing for him. He needed people who  _understood_  him. And that wasn’t Steve, at least not anymore.

There was a small bathroom adjoined to the bedroom, and with a few fumbled words that were resolutely ignored, Steve ducked gratefully inside. He didn’t know anything about injured war veterans, but he knew someone that did. Deep down, Steve knew that Natasha would’ve wanted Steve to go to her for help, but he wasn’t going to. Fumbling in his pockets, he pulled out an old flip phone and stared at it.

All those rumors on the internet that Steve didn’t know how to work basic machinery? Totally untrue, not to mention unfounded - he and Bucky  _had_  gone to the StarkExpo every year, after all. But the cellphones that people used nowadays were a bit much, even for him. But back before Steve had known where he was going, left adrift in the wake of the Helicarrier incident, Sam had pushed the flip phone into his hand.

‘ _Look, I know you say you’re not going anywhere.’_ Steve’s pretty sure that if Sam had more hair, he would have been running his fingers through it. ‘ _But...just take this, okay? If you need anything, just call.'_

To be honest, Steve still felt a little bad about not calling before they’d stolen a van and gone cross-country, but what would he have said? Natasha had been just as lost and searching for a focus as he had been, and Tony? They’d needed Tony, and besides, Tony probably would have done something even more reckless if he had been left at Stark tower. A bored Tony Stark was a terrifying thought.

Sam, though, Sam had a family and friends and people at the VA that relied on him. And dammit, no matter what Sam had said, Steve couldn’t just call him up in the middle of the night and ask him to drop  _everything_  for the man that had tried to kill them. Even if he knew that Sam would say yes. Maybe it was  _because_  he knew that Sam would say yes that Steve couldn’t call.

But if Steve was being honest, it was  _nice_  to have someone that wasn’t on the SHIELD payroll to talk to.

And was it really all that selfish of him if he wanted it to stay that way?

(The answer was yes).

He scrolled down through the contacts and selected ‘Sam Wilson’ before Steve could change his mind. The phone had only rang once, twice, before-

“ _Hello?_ ”

And Steve’s voice caught and maybe shook as he spilled the entirety of the past three days, Sam didn’t mention it. When he’d finally finished with the whispered confession “...I don’t know what to do,” Sam gave him a minute to breathe.

“ _Steve, listen. If there’s one thing I learned out there, it’s that Bucky’s lucky to have you._ ”

“What?”

“ _Hear me out. When we were all preparing to put the poor guy out of his misery, you were ready to stake your life on your faith in him. What I’m trying to say is sure, Bucky’s going to need help, and probably a hell of a lot consoling. But right now, he needs_  you.  _You’re his best friend, Steve_.”

“Was.” The traitorous word slipped past Steve’s lips before he could react.

“ _You_  are  _his best friend. And don’t you forget it. You already told me how much you believe in the dude, albeit in the context of a pretty overdramatic and sappy speech, but that’s not the point. The hard part’s not over yet, but at least you’ve got part of him back. Now you just gotta_ ,” Sam paused, considering. “ _...help him find the other bits._ ”

Poking the door open with one foot, Steve stared into the darkness and willed it to make any sense in his head. “And how do I do that?”

“ _Just talk him through it. Let him know that you’re there. it might take a little while, but he’ll get there in the end._ ” 

Steve thanked him quickly, and seriously considered caving when Sam asked if Steve needed him to come out and help.

Bucky’s chest was still rising and falling with short, quick breaths when Steve came returned and began rummaging through drawers. “Here,” He announced, bringing a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt back over to the bed. Bucky was still wearing the hoodie and ragged jeans that he’d been wearing for what looked like weeks. And while Steve was sure that they had probably been nice at some point, he imagined that Bucky would welcome the change.

Twenty minutes and one near-punch to the jaw later, Steve could confirm that he was, apparently, mistaken. But finally, with Steve’s encouragement, Bucky had shuffled by himself to the bathroom, clothes in hand. If he was being honest, although Steve was happy that Bucky was no longer trying to strangle him, the lingering lack of eye contact or speaking or just functioning in general left knots twisting in the pit of his stomach.

So much so, that no sooner had Bucky laid back down that Steve cleared his throat awkwardly and got comfortable against the side of the mattress.

“I’m not sure how to start,” Steve pretended not to feel disappointed when the man under the sheets didn’t react. “But...I know you don’t remember. A lot. I’m sorry,” Running his fingers through his hair, Steve chuckled. “I was never really the story teller; you were. You used to tell me stories when I was sick in bed, actually. You used to make yours up, but I’m still not that creative, so...tell me if you’ve heard this one.”

For a minute, Steve sifts through his memories for something that didn’t involve The War. When he stopped and thought, it actually made him sad how many of his fond memories came from behind enemy lines.

But then, Steve had always been his happiest during a fight - even back when he was stupid and brawny, without the muscle to back up his talk.

“So,” Steve grinned at the memory that springs, unburdened, from the days that still seem like they were two years ago. “Back, after my ma died, and you’d moved out, we used to share a little one-bedroom down in Brooklyn - I’m not sure if you remember any of that.” He looked for confirmation. He didn’t find any.  

“You used to work down at the docks, and for a while, I used to go with you. But see, it was only a matter of time ‘til they all found out that I couldn’t really pull my weight, so I used to go down to the grocery stores - the ones that were still in business, anyway - and do odd jobs. Back in the summer of, ‘39, I think it was? ‘40? It doesn’t really matter. Anyway, I knew things were tight, but I started noticing that things were needing to stretch a little further than they used to...”

 _Steve really didn’t want to say anything, but he was pretty sure it was getting to the point that_  some _one needed to say something, and apparently it wasn’t going to be Bucky._

 _“Heya...Buck? I know work’s tough and all, but c’mon, you haven’t gone out dancing with a dame in_  weeks,  _and I was just wonderin’... I mean, if you need help, if you need me to pick up some extra hours on Sunday morning or something. I don’t mind, y’know? You don’t need to tiptoe...”_

_Steve trailed off as he raised his eyes up off their beat up carpet and saw Bucky’s face._

_He was_  grinning.

 _“Aw, you bastard. You big jerk.” Steve could feel his cheeks stretching to make room for the grin taking over his face before Bucky had even pulled the wad of ones out of his pocket. “I was_  kidding.”

_“Naw, I know you, Stevie. You’ve been moanin’ and groanin’ about not having enough cash to go out to Coney Island for weeks now.”_

_Steve’s ears burned. “You know you didn’t hafta go n’ do that.”_

_“Yeah I did. Go get your coat.” Pulling him in for a quick one-armed hug, Bucky pressed his lips to the top of Steve’s disheveled blond hair, and then to his lips._

Swallowing, Steve stared unseeingly at the dark wall above Bucky’s head and didn’t mention that part of the story.

_As always, neither of them said anything about it, Steve just beamed up and broke away to get his damn coat._

From there, the moments come faster and faster, each one punching Steve in the gut with enough force to send him reeling. He remembered Bucky, smoothing his hair out of his face and leaning over the counter to bite his bottom lip at the girl behind the counter. 

_Steve finally let the laugh that had been building inside of him come bursting out. Bucky immediately took the discounted tickets and the cash he had saved, and made a beeline to the cotton candy booth, wiggling his eyebrows at Steve. Bucky always did have a sweet tooth._

_Somewhere back behind the ticket counter, Steve knew a girl had given Bucky her number and was probably hoping he would call (he wouldn’t). Steve tried to feel bad about that._

_But Bucky surely was making that very hard, especially with the way he insisted on trying to win Steve some ridiculous pink teddybear at the shooting range. And honestly, Steve wasn’t some dame, he wasn’t, but he still had to blush when Bucky knocked his shoulder into his and snorted, “it was rigged, pal, I swear”._

_By the time they were both full on cheap snacks and drunk on colored lights, it was dark enough that if Steve slipped his hand into Bucky’s larger one then, well, no one could see well enough to prove anything._

Steve was so distracted by the color of the moon behind the ferris wheel, the way it shone on Bucky’s carefree face, that he almost didn’t notice when the Bucky lying in bed warily brushed against his arm. Causing Steve to freeze.

Cautiously, Steve raised himself up and onto the bed, before relaxing against the pillows. He lay on the sheets, studying the ceiling and feeling slightly silly, until-

He felt Bucky curl, a question mark against his shoulder, around him. Not willing to push his luck, Steve let his most arm rest under Bucky’s weight, only reaching up far enough to play with the ends of his soft brown hair.

Neither made a sound.  _Just like old times_ , Steve thought ruefully.

_For their last stop of the night, Steve tried his best to strongarm Bucky over to the ferris wheel. Bucky went loudly, complaining that Steve had been eying the damn thing all night, but followed the smaller anyway._

_Steve knew that he probably looked like some starry eyed little kid, but he couldn’t help it. Not after Bucky threw his arm casually around Steve’s thin shoulders and pulled him in and away from the cool metal of their passenger car. Not when they could see the city lights in front of them, with the sounds of the ocean at their backs._

_Not when they rode all the way to the top, and Bucky -_

\---

“...we waited in line for that damn spinning wheel for almost an entire hour, Buck. You were complaining the  _entire_  time about how many bumper cart rounds you were missing out on...”

She knew it was intruding, but Natasha was an ex- (not really that ex anymore) spy after all, and so she paused outside Bucky’s door on the way to her room. The soothing voice of Steve filtered out, talking about a fair trip and popcorn, over seventy years ago. But the way he told the story, Steve had made it sound like the most magical night of his life. His tone was fond and gentle, as if he could ease Barnes’ memories back if he could only lure them out; it was the same way one might speak to a frightened animal.

She wondered if James had gotten spooked and lunged for Steve’s jugular yet.

She wondered if Steve was going to wake up to cold fingers making black spots dance across his vision.

Natasha hoped that it didn’t happen, yet knew that it would. The same way that she knew she could warn Rogers until the sky turned from black to blue and back again and it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference.

Captain America was determined, if nothing else. But she didn’t see any of Captain America in the hunch of Steve’s shoulders or the way he allowed his hand to brush against Barnes’ cheek every so often. For the first time, she saw Steve, not Captain America, turning to fight.

Fights that could not be won by blood, or by fists, or by war.

Instead, Steve looked relaxed, filling James’ head full of hazy July nights filled with nothing but quiet laughter and subtle kisses.

What? Of course she knew. The real question was who didn’t.

For the first time since waking up,  _Steve Rogers_  had found something he was willing to save, even if it meant sacrificing everything that Captain America had worked for. And though Natasha knew she shouldn’t, couldn’t let Steve lead himself on like this, throw everything away for a something that might turn out to be nothing.

But...

 _Let them have their fun,_  she thought. Besides, the damage had already been inflicted.

If there was anyone who was going to be able to drag James out of the haunted house that his head had become, it was Steve.

(If there was anyone that deserved love, it was James).

“...we rode all the way to the top, Buck. Just lookin’ out at the city twinkling like little stars, it was so beautiful, and you-you-”

Inside, Steve’s voice faltered and fell, and neither James nor Steve seemed keen to pick up the slack that it had left behind. But Natasha could already imagine it; the two of them, together.

She thought that if she had to choose someone to pick up the pieces shattered and scattered by ice, it would be Steve. Feeling content, she left Steve to his fairgrounds as she climbed into her own bed.

\---

Steve’s voice caught, and he  _remembered_. There were brightly colored bulbs flashing above them in infinite indefinite patterns, painting Steve’s normally sickly face with alien cyans and magentas when Bucky leaned in and pressed their lips together.

Closing his eyes, Steve conjured up the memory of nodding off on the ride down, supported by Bucky’s shoulder and warmed by the arm around his shoulder and  _clung_  to it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So apparently the end notes are slowly becoming devoted to the shit that Sam writes on this story when I'm not looking. 
> 
> “Once apon a time, Zoe wouldnt finish her goddamn chapter. So Sam, after finishing the last pages of her favorite yaoi, was forced into action. She took a fucktruck up to Fuck Mountain, where zoe was sitting and being unproductive, and kicked her ass. The end. 'That story sucked', said Bucky, 'Lets just have sex instead'"
> 
> "Steve was still lost in thought when he led Bucky into the spare bedroom, gently removing his thong. 'wtf why are you wearing a thong??' 'for u ;;))))'. Then they frick frackled."
> 
> So there you have it. Apparently if not for me, this fic would have descended into kinky sex. That's right: I'm standing in the way of kinky sex. I apologize.


	6. In Which Cognitive Recalibration is Not Always The Answer (But is Always a Good Start)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, the formatting appears to be okay, so here we are! It's September tomorrow, so here's a little "goodbye to Summer" gift. 
> 
> Thank you so much to my own personal superhero Sam, (who just got a Ao3 account http://archiveofourown.org/users/dawgies yay!) for as always being my cheerleader, editor, partner and crime, and for watching the Winter Soldier with me way too many times. 
> 
> Thank you to all of you who read, leave kudos, and/or comment with your reactions or critiques. They are so very much appreciated <3 you guys really are the best readers I could ask for.

Tony decided that he regretted asking for oatmeal somewhere around the time that the oatmeal bowl nearly put a dent in his skull. And Jesus, how the hell was he supposed to know that Barnes was just about the touchiest assassin he’d ever met? Granted...Tony did feel a little bit bad about the relapse he’d caused the man. That, and the wounded looks Rogers kept throwing him weren’t exactly helping. 

It was comforting to learn that the Soldier was still able to react to external stimuli, actually. It just...would have been more comforting if the reaction in question hadn’t been because of a HYDRA memory trigger. 

Tony thought he knew where this road was headed, and if he was right, the next couple months would be equivalent to walking through a minefield. Glancing around, he searched for a napkin to wipe the oatmeal out of his goatee. 

Tony maintained that it wasn’t a beard, no matter what Natasha or Pepper said. Beards were for wizards. Goatees, on the other hand, were for stunningly attractive and well-aged men.  
\---

“It wasn’t his fault,” Natasha answered coolly as Stark gaped at her, oatmeal coating the sink behind them. “Your breakfast probably reminded him of the slop that HYDRA used to force feed him, back when he was going through training. He reacted automatically.”

The boys knew better than to ask her how and why she knew. Natasha preferred it that way. 

Shrugging, Stark munched contentedly on his pancakes. For one blessed moment, all was sleepy and quiet, James’s uneasy shifting the only noise apart from scraping plates. Then - 

“So,” Stark cleared his throat. Natasha closed her eyes and considered assassination with a spoon. “Steve, I know you aren’t going to like this, but because no one else really wants to say it, I guess I will. We need to bring him to Malibu for testing.” 

“Bucky’s right here.” Across the plates and pancake stacks, Steve was scowling, gripping the tabletop with both hands. “Don’t talk about him like he’s not.” 

“You know that’s not what I _meant_ ,” Tony waved his fork airily. “Maybe testing wasn’t really the right word. All I’m saying is - we’ve got to run some tests - diagnostics at the very least. Barnes - he’s not _stable_ , Rogers. I know you want to just pretend that everything is okay-”

That was enough. “ _Stark,_.” She snapped. Steve looked about half a second away from throttling the man, and the tension in the room was finally beginning to seep under James’ skin. 

“- _but it’s not_ , and my hands are tied out here.” Stark ticked off each item on his fingers. “We have no way of knowing if Barnes is tracked, or even bugged. There could be weapons, explosives, _toxins_ in that arm and we’d have no idea. Steve,” Leaning over their abandoned plates, Tony cast a pleading look at Rogers. “Steve, I know you want to imagine the infinite undesirable scenarios there are, but there’s nothing that could stop Barnes from snapping your neck in the middle of the night. We don’t _know_ -”

“He wouldn’t.”

“ _We don’t know that_. We don’t even know why he’s still here; he certainly doesn’t have to be.” They all looked at James, who looked ready to bolt at any second. 

Most of the time, Natasha pretended to know a lot. Sometimes, she didn’t know quite as much as she’d like. James’ decisions were no mystery to her; James she could understand. She knew the pull of a warm bed, food, and protection. She understood the desire to escape from the constant pressure of capture. Even now, she could still feel the way her chest constricted when the feds were nipping a little too close at her heels, mere hours away from locking her in a cell and melting down the key.

That was a feeling she’d like to forget. 

The legs of James’ chair scratched the wood floor as he rose. “I’m not here to kill you.” He snapped, flinching as Steve made a movement towards him. “If I were, you’d already be dead. I’ll go with you, to California, but if you experiment on me? Well. You won’t live to regret it.”

It was after James moved to leave the room that Natasha heard it: The scraping on the roof, the sound of gravel crunching grittily under the heel of a boot. She paused, unsure if the others had heard. Steve seemed preoccupied with looking imploringly into the grain of the table, and it would’ve been impossible for Tony to hear. Just as she was about to make a subtle move towards the door, James froze. She swore under her breath. 

Without warning, James cocked his head, before leaping headlong out the window, spraying the table with shards. Before Stark could even make a move to summon his suit, the assassin hoisted himself up and onto the roof before disappearing from view. 

“See? This is what I’m talking about!” Stark shouted, as his armor collected around his, pieces flying from his bedroom. Ignoring him, Steve snatched up his ever-present shield and made to follow Barnes. But he needn’t bother. 

A moment later, a series of surprised screams and the sounds of bodies hitting the ground found the three of them pushing over their chairs and running to the door. Natasha, already going through tactical maneuvers in her head, nearly tripped on James, who had thrown the would-be mercenary into a bush. Somehow, despite the lack of pockets, James had managed to procure and conceal one of the kitchen’s roasting forks on his person, which he now wielded wildly. And really, _what the hell_? Who kept one of _those_ in a safe house?

While the others gaped, she scanned the tree line at the boundary of the house. If there was one body on the roof, then it was more than likely that reinforcements were lying, waiting for them. The man on the roof had probably been a distraction, and a good one at that. 

If HYDRA already had them trapped in its jaws, they needed to get James out. Separating Barnes and Rogers wouldn’t be easy, but would prove wise, not to mention strategically beneficial.

She was just about to order Stark to take the suit, Barnes, and head to Malibu on their own, when the assassin stumbled from his leafy entanglement. Stark beat her to the punch. “ _Barton_?” Tony choked out. 

At first, Natasha didn’t understand. Clint wasn’t _here_ , he couldn’t be. (She didn’t know where he was, and the thought scared her more than she liked to admit on most nights). Her heartbeat thumping double time in her ears was the only sound she could hear as she watched Clint Barton wrest the weapon from James’ grasp. 

\---

Steve, bless him and his superhuman logic skills, seized Bucky around the chest and hauled him up and away. Tony considered helping him...until he watched Barnes claw and at the backs of Steve’s hands. Then the soldier, still spitting like a cat, dove for his roasting fork, and Tony thought _‘Mm, better not’_. It looked like Rogers had a handle on it, and besides, Tony had no way or repairing his suit all the way out here if Barnes decided to do a little reconstruction with that robot arm of his. 

That thing needed to be _scanned_ , dammit. 

Tony busied himself with hauling Barton off his ass, and damn, the guy was weaponized to the teeth. On top of the usual collapsible bow and ultra thin titanium arrows, Clint had also included a colorful array of his favorite trick arrows (including the exploding ones), and his sedative-tipped throwing stars. But as he turned to brush the grass off his vest, both Tony and Natasha caught sight of the M4A1 Carbine strapped to his back. Tony swallowed. That wasn’t the kind of firepower you carried lightly. 

“Barton,” Tony repeated. Off to his left, Natasha stepped forward uncertainly. She looked lost. “....what are you doing here?” 

“Why didn’t you _tell_ me?” She whispered. Barnes had gone limp in Steve’s arms, ignoring everything but for the archer’s eyes as he turned to Tony. 

“There’s a lot you don’t know, Stark, Captain...Romanov. I...suggest a debriefing, at your leisure. I think there’s a lot we need to discuss.” Thrown by the agent’s unusually former language, Tony could do nothing but nod. 

Tony didn’t turn, even as he heard the door slam behind him, even as he hears Steve mutter a broken curse and follow the Soldier at a jog. Instead, he flinched as Romanov clenched both her fists and took a step forward. 

“I think you owe us a lot more than a debriefing, Clint.” 

Her real meaning, ‘ _You owe me more than a debriefing_ ’, Tony could see in her uneasy stance and the way she couldn’t quite meet Clint’s eyes.

“Agent Romanov, this matter is highly classified, which can be saved for after I have a cup of coffee and a butterfly bandage.” Tony stepped back onto the porch, unsure if he should leave the two of them be. They seemed to have completely forgotten that he was there. 

“No,” Natasha muttered, face contorted. “ _No_ , you don’t get to pull this kind of shit, Clint, you told me you were stationed over in Ukraine. That was why you couldn’t text, or call, or send a goddamn _postcard_ , and come to find out, you’re really working for HYDRA,-”

Clint scoffs, and the facade dropped. “Who the hell said anything about HYDRA. I know that there have been accusations flying around, but we work for _SHIELD_ ; I’ve been working under Fury longer than I’ve been on my own. How could you believe I would do something like that?”

“Well, _apparently_ there’s a lot about you that I don’t know.” 

Natasha waited, and Clint said nothing. The three of them stood in uncomfortable silence for several moments before Natasha choked back something that sounded suspiciously like a sob and whirls on her heel. She was almost to the door when Tony sees her bite her lip. 

“You promised.” It comes out confused, and Natasha repeats it, frustrated. “You _promised_. After Fury ordered you to bring me in, and you found me, and told him that you wouldn’t. You _promised_ that you were on my side. That you would always _be_ on my side. So what changed?”

Clint ran his hand (that was not attached to his bleeding arm) through his hair. “I am on your side, Romanov, but you have to understand that you guys running around playing as superheroes has got me stuck between a rock and unemployment.” Tony pulled a face. If they weren’t superheroes, than what the hell was that whole ‘Avenger’s Initiative’ thing about? Because unfortunately, most of them were about fifteen years too old to play at being in a boy band. “You have something valuable. Something, unfortunately, that the higher ups at SHIELD would kill, literally, _kill_ , to have.” 

“Fury?” She asked skeptically. 

Shaking his head, Clint walked towards Natasha, then winced as he sat down on the stone step. “Fury’s not running the show anymore. I’ve been given my orders, and I took them long before Cap decided to start playing therapist. He’s an asset, Natasha. An asset that we need right now. If we don’t take him into SHIELD custody, HYDRA _will_ get him back.”

“...and we can’t afford for them to get the upper hand.” Natasha finished, softly - understandingly. 

“Exactly,” Clint nodded, sighing in a relieved sort of way. “I didn’t want to go behind your back, trust me, Tasha, that’s the last thing that I ever wanted to do, but I - _we_ \- have an obligation to bring this guy back and get him working for us.” 

_An obligation_. Tony didn’t like the sound of that. Thinking in terms of obligation was just another way of saying ‘doing something you don’t want to’. Tony figured he could probably fill decades, _lifetimes_ full of decisions made out of obligation. Filling imagined obligations to his dead dad, his company, to Pepper - it didn’t matter. He didn’t like them. 

And maybe he’d learned to pick his battles, because standing on principle was a good idea in theory, but lead to a whole lot of 1 AM arguments with Pepper about charity galas. But like hell if he was going to let someone take Captain America’s Bucky Barnes out of some twisted sense of _obligation_. Steve had never sat down and taken orders a day in his goddamn life. Maybe it was about time that someone joined him. 

“You’re not going to do _jack shit_.” Tony’s voice came out all weird and echoing, like it always did, but in the resonating silence, it sounded too loud to his ears. “If you want to take Barnes, you’re going to have to go through me and Steve first.”

Clint looked as if Tony had sprouted an extra head, and that extra head had just tried to lick him. “Barnes? As in, like, Bucky Barnes? Who the hell said anything about him?”

\---

Barnes rolled his eyes when he heard Rogers pause outside his door only to shift back and forth. Why he chose now, of all times, to act uncomfortable was a complete mystery to Barnes. _Why not last night_ , he wondered. Why not last night, when Rogers had laid against him without shame. The way he had desperately recounted seemingly innocent tales as if he, a trained assassin, wasn’t able to read between purposeful pauses. 

If he could, Barnes would be the man that Captain Steve Rogers wanted him to be. If he knew how, he would become Bucky again: best friend, sidekick, and dirty little secret. But he didn’t know. The memories came back in painful flashes, burning broken synapses and bringing him to his knees. He didn’t want to be fractured into so many little pieces, even if it meant he never remembered what Steve looked like young and unlimited. But _damn_ Rogers and his would-be rescue squad for not even giving him the choice. He had never _asked_ for this. He had never asked for any of it. 

Somewhere between the wipes and the cryo and the drugs and the assignments, Steve had forced open his skull and added another crack to the crumbling layers. He had done nothing but accelerate an already inevitable process. The Helicarrier assignment was always meant to be his last. A perfect way for HYDRA to minimize their liabilities _and_ take out Captain America, all in one fell swoop. 

The wood outside on the landing creaked ominously, pinching at Barnes’ already twisted nerves. 

Thankfully, blessedly, Rogers chose that time to knock, and apologize for the attempted assassination, committed by Barton, whose first name was apparently Clint. 

And Barnes had nodded and refrained from speaking. He knew that when he spoke in Bucky’s voice, it put Steve on edge. 

Rogers suggested sparring in the basement. There were mats, apparently. The entire house had been outfitted to provide asylum to those who might be running from problems bigger than their enemies. Not that the bulletproof glass had provided even the semblance of protection when faced with him. But then again, most hit men didn’t come equipped with cybertronic limbs. Steve looked at him steadily and told Barnes that working off nervous energy through a well-matched fight was a good way of working through stress. Barnes, never one to give up a chance to work out his muscles that ached to throw a punch, agreed readily. 

Some petty part of Barnes twinges in pleasure every time he ‘forgets’ to hold his punches and jabs. His chest tightens, however, when Steve grits out, “Jesus, take it easy, Buck.” 

“I am not Bucky.” He snapped back, all teeth and curled lip. Because he wasn’t. And yes, maybe when the agent first bribed him into his car with the promise of information, Barnes had believed maybe he could still be Bucky, somehow. And he had _tried_ , he really had. He had willed himself to remember with every ounce of his scavenged self-control, and it hadn’t made a bit of difference. 

Rogers began to push him towards the edge of the mat, gaining two steps for every one of Barnes’.

He couldn’t _be_ Bucky; Barnes didn’t know how. Never again would he refer to himself as something he was not. And he wasn’t the Winter Soldier, or a prisoner of war, or Steve’s precious _Bucky_. No, he was Barnes, the same name he assumed he must have been called when he was lying in the trenches of World War II. He had been a soldier, as he was now: stuck somewhere in between the lives of a civilian and a weapon. Barnes was sure he was no longer a weapon, but he didn’t believe he’d see a day when he no longer thought of himself as fighting a war. 

Barnes lashed out wildly and missed by a wide margin. He couldn’t even concentrate long enough to beat an untrained fighter in the ring. Pathetic.

“You _are_ ,” Steve gasped, and Barnes growled. How could he possibly make the man _understand_. “Why is there something wrong with that?” 

“It’s not a question of wanting or rejection; it’s a question of can, and I _can’t_.”

“No, you can,” Panting, Rogers made a weak effort to block the barrage of blows Barnes was hailing him with. “I believe in you. You’re strong - the strongest, and I’ll help you. You can-”

“You can’t will two halves of a broken bone back together!” Barnes finally shouts, delivering such a harsh kick to Rogers’ side that he staggers to the ground. He’s panting now, and for the first time (or maybe not the first time - it’s not like he can remember much these days) Barnes felt hatred for the man kneeling in front of him. 

For one blistering, angry second, he considered delivering a blow that would snap the man’s neck. It would take but a moment, and then he could escape, avoid capture like he knew he could. 

But. 

Steve struggled to his feet, clearly nervous, but also unwilling to show distrust. And as much as Barnes loathed Rogers’ uncompromising faith in him, he stubbornly refused to fulfill Pierce and Lukin’s final assignment. 

That, and as much as it grated on his nerves-

“I want to know.” He whispered, quietly; so quietly, that for a long minute, Barnes hoped Steve hadn’t heard it. 

“I’m not sure how to help you.” There was sweat dripping down Steve’s temples. He both looked and sounded as if he had just lost a fight.

“Give up.”

“What?” Rogers looked up wildly. “What - Bucky, you know I can’t do that-”

“If you want to help me, you’ll do it.” Taking a deep breath, Barnes willed his right hand to stop trembling. A sniper’s hands weren’t meant to shake. Simple tasks were always more difficult around Steve. “I...appreciate everything you’ve tried to do for me. And if you’re here just to help me regain my memories, or because you’re afraid that I can’t take care of myself, or out of sense of, of, of _obligation_ , then I’ll leave.” Steve, who was seemingly been stilled into silence by the sheer amount of sentences Barnes had strung together, looked ready to argue against him leaving. “I can take care of myself, but I can’t spend the life I’ve just gotten back chasing memories that might be gone forever.”

Barnes expected him to fight him on this, but to his surprise, Steve did not. 

“Than what do you want.”

“I...” He swallowed. _Why was he here?_. “My...body knows you, muscle memory remembers you but I....I want to _understand_. The Smithsonian, the history books - they all say I was your best friend. I have changed, but you changed too. Maybe we can...try again?”

It was too much to ask, Barnes realized. He couldn’t ask Steve to say goodbye to Bucky again, not when he knew how many times Steve had been forced to let him go. If only, he thought. If only he had those damned memories, then he could at least _pretend_. If nothing else, he could at least give Steve Rogers time to say a proper goodbye to the _real_ Bucky Barnes, instead of the imposter wearing his smile. 

“I’d...like that a lot, Buck.”

Well, if they were going to do this, then-

“Hello, my name is James Barnes.” He wiped his real palm against the leg of his borrowed sweatpants uncomfortably. He rolled his eyes at the question on Steve’s lips. “You can call me whatever you want; I don’t care.”

Steve answered in the curve of his mouth. “Hello James, I always called you Bucky, I hope you don’t mind too much. It’d be a pretty hard habit to break at this point. I’m Steve Rogers. Well, _Steven_ Rogers, but.. no one really calls me that.”

Without warning, Steve pulled the ex assassin in for a quick hug, and their bodies touched at seventeen different points. And if someone ever asked, Barnes would be able to describe exactly how each one burned against him.

\---

“I...” Clint looked imploringly up at Natasha. “I didn’t...” He always was shit at apologizing. Natasha smiled; she knew. 

“Yeah, we know you didn’t.” Tony muttered, pressing the paper towel to the cut on his cheek. “Need some more ice, Barton?”

The archer removed the plastic baggie filled with ice chips to reveal the rather impressive knot on his forehead. He prodded at it gingerly. “Nah, I think the swelling’s finally going down. Although I’m not really sure how necessary the cognitive recalibration was. Not that many people around these days to brainwash me.”

“Well, you never know.” She adds, looking perfectly immaculate as always. “The thought did cross my mind once or twice.” 

“Tasha, I get it. I know I acted like kind of an ass.” Clint steeled himself for his next words. “But we work for an intelligence agency. Deception is the name of the game.”

And it was the truth, but maybe it was a bit harsh. Natasha bit her lip and shook her head. 

Glancing between the two of them, Tony rose. “I think I’ll just go inside and put the suit away properly.” Most of the pieces, save for the gloves, which remained on his hands, sat in a pile just inside the door. “I’m not sure if you were actually serious about that debriefing, Barton, but I think we need one. I, for one, don’t know what the hell we think we’re doing.”

“Seconded,” Clint nodded emphatically. Tony looked relieved, making it a point to close the door behind his so that the two of them could have some semblance of privacy. 

She moved so that they were sitting, side-by-side. No need to look at one another. “You’ve been trailing the Winter Soldier all this time? You watched all of us nearly get slaughtered out there. We could have really used you.”

“I would’ve helped, but I didn’t know. I didn’t even find out that Fury had died until it was revealed that he had faked the whole thing. I was in Krasnoyarsk investigating the Winter Soldier's Russian center of ops when I got the call. By the time the emergency jet touched down in JFK,” Clint threw up his hands, a rueful smile on his face. “I had missed all the action, and was immediately ordered by order of the World Security Council's temporary new head intelligence that I should carry on with my mission.”

“Who-”

“Now Ms. Romanov,” She laughed and pushed at his shoulder as Clint mock-gasped and looked scandalized. “You know that’s confidential and requiring top clearance. That, and I signed forms saying I shouldn't fraternize with fugitives.” 

Clint watched her expression crumple minutely, and felt his heart shudder a bit. She hadn’t thought that far ahead yet. Awkwardly, he reached out and took her hand, pulling her up with him. “Hey...” Natasha raised one carefully shaped eyebrow at the grin he felt stretching across his face. “I know I just got here, and may have inadvertently compromised the security of your house, but why don’t go make some sandwiches or something? If I don’t eat pretty soon, I might actually knaw off Stark’s arm.”

She followed him inside shaking her head, but as she slammed the screen door, then the reinforced glass. Yet, he still caught the words “...hadn’t been sitting on the roof all day like a bird, maybe you wouldn’t be so hungry.” 

Yeah. Clint was totally going to sneak extra Tabasco into her peanut butter and jelly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there we get to the "Where the hell was Clint Barton" aka why this entire screwball adventure even got started in the first place. And now, some notes from Sam in the writers' room. 
> 
> “and that’s the end of THAT” steve jumps out of window w/ shield
> 
> announcer voice: “will steve ever stop jumping out of things? The world may never know”
> 
> bucky having panic attacks in the distance:  
>  “STEVE. STEVE NO. STEVE.’  
> “what do you MEAN you weren’t wearing a parachute?!”   
> “You let me shoot you HOW many times?”  
> “I swear to god im never letting you outside again”


End file.
